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HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 


Books  by  W.  L.  GEORGE 

Hail,  Columbia! 

Caliban 

Woman  and  Tomorrow 

Until  the  Day  Break 

The  Strangers'  Wedding 

The  Second  Blooming 

Little  Beloved 

The  Intelligence  of  Woman 

The  Individualist 

The  City  of  Light 

A  Bed  of  Roses 

Blind  Alley 


HOLIDAY-MAKERS    IN   A    NEW    ENGLAND    VILLAGE 


— —       ■  I 


HAIL 
COLUMBIA! 

RANDOM  IMPRESSIONS   OF  A 
CONSERVATIVE  ENGLISH  RADICAL 

BY 
W.  L   GEORGE 


ILLUSTRATED    BY 

GEORGE  WRIGHT 


HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

MCMXXI 


Hail  Columbia! 


Copyright,  1021.  by  Harper  &  Brothers 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Dedicated  in  Friendship 

to 
Sir  Lionel  Phillips,  Bart. 


472G53 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  pAG* 

Preface vii 

I.  In  Old  America i 

II.  America  In  the  Making 37 

III.  The  American  Scene 73 

IV.  The  American  Woman 115 

V.  Megapolis  Southward 153 

VI.  Parthian  Shots       195 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Holiday-makers  in  a  New  England  Village   .     .    Frontispiece 

At  That  Auction  I  Met  Uncle  Sam Facing  p.  10 

One  Has  the  Impression  of  Aloof  Aristocracy  in 

What  Remains  of  Old  Boston 

Charming,  Courtly,  and  Cultured,  These  Aristo- 
crats Seem  to  Be  Only  Shadows 

The  Grain  Elevators  Are  Like  Turreted  Castles, 

Spectral  White 

The  Appeal  of  the  Circus  Is  Perennial  Through- 
out the  Land    

Wealth  Gushes  from  the  Ground  in  Torrents 

The  National  Restlessness  Makes  for  a  Gayety 

and  Charm  of  Its  Own 


14 

18 

52 

62 

70 


PREFACE 

When  a  stranger,  visiting  a  foreign  country,  devotes 
to  his  journey  less  than  six  months,  and  when  he  then 
writes  a  book  upon  that  country,  he  feels  inclined  to 
apologize  to  its  citizens.  It  is  not  that  he  doubts  his 
own  ability  to  understand  what  he  has  seen,  nor  that 
he  is  uncertain  in  the  judgments  which  arise  there- 
from; if  he  has  for  himself  the  respect  that  a  respect- 
able man  deserves,  he  must  believe  that  he  has  written 
a  worthy  book.  Only,  after  a  short  visit,  he  must  tell 
himself  that  a  great  deal  must  have  escaped  him.  I, 
who  visited  a  considerable  portion  of  the  United 
States,  cannot  help  thinking:  "You  went  from  Maine 
to  Nebraska,  from  New  York  to  Georgia,  from  Georgia 
to  Texas,  Kansas,  Illinois.  You  know  something  of 
Ohio,  Pennsylvania,  Missouri,  Indiana  .  .  .  but  what  of 
Wyoming  and  Colorado?  and  you  didn't  stay  long  in 
Virginia.  And  Seattle  looks  awfully  exciting  on  the 
map."  That's  the  trouble.  One  wonders  whether 
one's  opinions  would  not  have  been  varied  by  more 
extended  experience.  One  feels  presumptuous;  one 
tells  oneself  that  one  cannot  condense  within  those  few 
months  the  necessary  experience,  and  especially  the 
necessary  repose,  which  would  make  it  possible  to  ar- 
rive at  balanced  judgments. 

That  is  not  quite  my  state  of  mind  as  I  lay  these 
chapters  before  the  American  public.  I  quite  realize 
that  portions  of  my  journeys  have  been  purely  geo- 
graphic; that  I  have  not  had  all  the  contact  I  should 


viH  PREFACE 

have  needed  with  representative  American  families, 
for  truly  representative  families  generally  keep  them- 
selves rather  to  themselves.  I  know  that  my  vision  of 
the  social  life  must  be  that  of  a  guest  entertained  rather 
specially,  with  great  profusion,  with  immense  cor- 
diality, and  that  this  does  not  quite  indicate  the  or- 
dinary social  life  of  the  Americans.  Especially,  I 
realize  that  I  have  not  lived  inside  the  family,  that  I 
have  not  witnessed  the  quarrels  at  breakfast,  the  young 
man's  moods  of  depression,  nor  heard  him  proclaim  in 
the  home  circle  his  ambitions  and  ideals.  I  have  not 
been  on  the  inside,  but  I  have  been  as  near  to  it  as  I 
could,  nearer,  I  hope,  than  most  visiting  Englishmen, 
because  I  wanted  to. 

That  is  the  main  point.  I  came  to  America  interested 
only  in  subsidiary  fashion  in  scenery,  business,  and 
politics;  I  had  to  take  notice  of  these,  but  primarily  I 
came  over  to  meet  the  Americans,  to  try  to  understand 
them,  and  to  take  on  the  easy  task  of  liking  them.  I 
did  not  expect  within  those  months  to  acquire  a  perfect 
understanding  of  America,  for  I  have  lived  a  middling 
long  life  without  gaining  a  complete  understanding  of 
my  own  countrymen.  But  at  least  I  did  begin  sym- 
pathetically, and  so  I  beg  my  readers  to  believe  that 
my  inevitable  errors  are  due  to  enthusiasm  as  much  as 
to  ignorance.  Also,  I  cannot  overstress  the  fact  that 
nowhere  do  I  venture  to  lay  down  conclusions;  to  do 
that  would  be  impertinent;  all  I  have  attempted  is  a 
book  of  impressions.  I  have  done  my  best  to  see  things 
as  they  are,  and  to  determine  their  origins,  but  I  had 
no  means  of  tracing  the  obscurer  impulses  in  the  Ameri- 
can temperament;  it  would  have  taken  me  twenty 
years  even  to  guess  at  them.  So  these  are  only  im- 
pressions, and  they  should  be  taken  as  such,  as  the 
work  of  a  very  well-disposed,  interested  stranger,  who 


PREFACE  ix 

hopes   that   he   is   intelligent   and   knows  that   he   is 
friendly. 

That  point  of  friendliness  must  not  be  overlooked. 
Historic  rivalry  and  divergences  in  social  habits  have 
often  led  Englishmen  to  cross  the  Atlantic  ready  to 
carp,  and  I  suppose  I  may  say  that  many  Americans 
have  visited  England  in  the  same  spirit.  The  result 
has  not  only  proved  superficial,  but  also  adverse  to 
international  amity.  If  a  man  visits  a  foreign  country, 
he  is  not  going  to  judge  it  fairly  unless  he  makes  up  his 
mind  to  view  it  at  least  neutrally.  For  my  part,  I  went 
over  with  a  biased  mind;  I  was  biased  in  favor  of 
America.  This  was  not  only  due  to  my  having  been 
brought  up  in  Paris,  where  the  American  girl  and  the 
American  dollar  are  very  popular;  nor  was  it  entirely 
due  to  the  kindness  with  which  my  writings  had  been 
received  in  the  States.  My  bias  in  favor  of  America 
arose  from  an  intellectual  process.  Long  before  sailing 
I  had  told  myself:  "If  within  a  century  a  new  country 
has  reached  a  population  of  over  a  hundred  millions; 
if  it  has  created  as  many  universities  as  England  owns 
secondary  schools;  if  it  has  produced  Whitman,  Edi- 
son, Lincoln,  Robert  Lee,  Grant,  Whistler,  Henry 
James;  if  it  has  grown  strong  enough  to  compel  the 
greedy  imperialism  of  Europe  to  take  its  hands  off  the 
American  continent — if  it  has  done  all  that,  that  coun- 
try must  hold  some  greatness."  On  these  lines  I  was 
entitled  to  assume  the  greatness  of  America,  and  I 
needed  only  to  discover  it.  How  far  I  have  been  able 
to  discover  it  the  following  chapters  will  show. 

In  this  quest  I  have,  so  far  as  possible,  avoided  gen- 
eralizations. Generalizations  are  the  devil,  and  yet 
one  cannot  quite  do  without  them,  so  I  have  tried  to 
attenuate  them,  toj  qualify  [them.  That  is  not  merely  a 
trick;  I  ask  the  reader  to  remember  that  all  my  quali- 


x  PREFACE 

fications  are  essential  to  my  process  of  thought.  My 
whole  attitude  to  facts  is:  first,  to  be  sure  of  them; 
secondly,  to  check  them;  thirdly,  to  have  them  checked 
by  somebody  else,  and,  when  they  are  established,  to 
doubt  them.  Notably,  I  have  tried  not  to  generalize 
in  the  comparative  way  which  is  so  common  in  books  of 
travel.  One  does  it  almost  unconsciously.  One  wants 
to  say,  "Americans  drink  ice  water,  whereas  the  Eng- 
lish. .  .  ."  This  seems  to  me  bad  observation.  The 
thing  to  record  is  that  the  Americans  drink  ice  water. 
Who  cares  whether  the  English  prefer  sack  or  Malmsey? 
I  have  tried  to  take  the  Americans  as  I  found  them, 
as  they  were,  instead  of  forcing  their  reluctant  shapes 
into  the  English  standard  mold.  Who  are  the  British, 
after  all,  that  they  should  be  taken  as  the  human 
standard? 

Not  to  generalize,  not  to  compare,  and  to  accept 
things  as  they  impress  me — that  seems  to  me  the  best 
way  of  gaining  of  America  a  picture  not  entirely  dis- 
torted. Also,  I  did  a  little  preliminary  work,  which  the 
visiting  Englishman  should  undoubtedly  subject  him- 
self to!  I  read  a  fairly  fat  book  on  American  history 
before  I  landed  in  the  country.  And  I  extracted  for 
memorizing  the  principal  points.  I  do  not  pretend  that 
after  this  I  could  have  matriculated  at  Princeton,  but 
I  did  obtain  some  idea  of  who  was  Alexander  Hamilton, 
of  the  fact  that  separatism,  which  broke  out  in  the 
Civil  War,  already  existed  in  1787;  I  was  able  to  realize 
the  difference  ofimpulse  in  industrial  New  England  and 
agricultural  Louisiana,  and  so  forth.  Historical  method 
has  its  dangers,  for  it  tends  to  make  one  think  that  his- 
tory repeats  itself.  Which  is  nonsense.  When  history 
repeats  itself,  it  generally  stutters. 

Lastly,  I  have  tried  to  pursue  truth,  even  though 
since  Pilate  we  have  not  progressed  very  far  in  knowing 


PREFACE  xi 

what  it  is.  I  have  done  my  best  with  the  fugitive  ap- 
pearances which  masquerade  as  verity  in  a  fluctuating 
world.  That  is  the  best  one  can  hope  to  do,  and,  at 
least,  it  is  the  best  man  can  do  for  his  own  self-respect. 
To  blame  freely,  that  is  easy  enough;  to  praise  with 
abundance,  that  is  perhaps  more  difficult.  For  praise 
of  the  foreigner,  except  for  those  who  think  their  own 
country  always  in  the  wrong,  demands  of  one  a  slight 
imaginative  leap.  One  has  to  throw  aside  old  preju- 
dices and  habits,  to  see  things  with  eyes  renewed,  eyes 
almost  virginal.  One  can't  quite  do  it,  for  the  pictures 
accumulated  during  one's  life  haunt  one's  retina.  One 
can't  be  born  again  so  easily  as  that.  But  one  can  try; 
one  can  conscientiously  and  continually  try.  In  such 
a  book  as  this,  one  may  do  so  with  profit  and  certainly 
without  tremor.  A  country  such  as  America,  so  im- 
mensely vital,  so  rich,  so  ambitious,  has  less  than  any 
in  the  world  a  right  or  a  reason  to  fear  the  truth. 


HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

Random  Impressions  of  a  Conservative 
English  Radical 


I 
IN  OLD  AMERICA 

I  BEGIN  at  Nashua.  At  Nashua  incipit  vita 
nova.  This  is  not  so  paradoxic  as  the  sight 
of  the  painted  wooden  cottages  of  the  little  New 
Hampshire  town  might  suggest;  at  least  I  hope 
that  these  lines  may  reveal  my  impression  that  in 
America  new  life  begins  everywhere.  It  is  not  my 
fault  that  I  am  in  Nashua;  even  before  I  left 
England  my  American  friends  were  receiving  with 
the  sympathy  due  to  lunatics  the  assertion  that  I 
intended  to  visit  neither  Yellowstone  Park,  nor 
the  Grand  Canon,  nor  Niagara,  and  that  neither 
wild  horses  nor  tame  railroads  would  drag  me  up 
the  Lehigh  Valley.  "But,"  they  persist  even 
now,  "you'll  go  to  the  Rockies.  You  mustn't  miss 
the  Rockies.  Oh,  do  go  to  the  Rockies !"  until  I 
wonder  whether  their  adjuration  to  go  to  the 


V*  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

Rockies  does  not  conceal  a  desire  to  rid  New 
England  of  my  presence. 

You  will  ask:  "Why  this  aversion  from  the 
natural  beauties  of  America  ?  Is  there  no  poetry 
in  your  soul?"  To  which  I  answer:  "I  feel  no 
hatred  for  the  rolling  Mississippi,  but  what  I  have 
come  to  see  is  not  American  territory,  but  American 
men  and  women,  not  crags  or  cathedrals,  except 
in  so  far  as  they  have  determined  the  development 
of  the  American  citizen.  Not  monuments,  but 
men,  is  my  simple  motto,  whose  simplicity  con- 
ceals almost  unapproachable  ambition.  I  want  to 
understand  the  American,  to  discover  the  dominant 
traits  of  a  hundred  and  ten  million  people,  number- 
ing a  dozen  races,  speaking  eighty  languages,  living 
under  climates  which  here  bring  ten  feet  of  snow, 
there  nurture  the  palm  tree  and  the  cotton  plant. 

That  is  a  pretty  enterprise,  and  you  will  justly 
say  that  these  Britishers  must  be  rather  sure  of 
themselves  to  come  over  for  six  months  on  such 
an  errand.  To  which  I  will  plead  guilty,  and  seek 
extenuation  in  the  fact  that  many  of  my  country- 
men have  given  not  six  months,  but  six  weeks, 
and  that  the  results  of  such  haste  have  been  bad 
from  the  point  of  view  of  international  relations. 
When  a  misunderstanding  arises  between  a  man  and 
a  woman  it  often  leads  to  marriage  and  happiness; 
between  nations,  however,  it  favors  threats  of  war. 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  3 

So  my  task  is  not  to  describe  features  and  places, 
which  my  readers  know  better  than  I  do  and  almost 
as  well  as  the  authors  of  the  guidebooks,  but  to 
proceed  like  this:  There  are  a  dozen  Americas — 
within  the  Federal  boundary  lies  British  Massa- 
chusetts, where  live  Americans;  Spanish  New 
Mexico  and  California,  where  live  Americans; 
Teutonic,  Slavic,  and  Scandinavian  Middle  West, 
where  live  Americans.  The  son  of  the  Polish  Jew 
on  First  Avenue  is  an  American;  the  son  of  the 
Alabama  negro  is  an  American.  The  son  of  the 
Pilgrims  at  Cape  Cod  is  an  American.  My  desire 
is  to  find  out  what  unites  these  varied  people,  what 
keeps  them  together  where  no  man  pursueth,  what 
views  are  held  on  one  ocean,  yet  not  denied  on  the 
other.  Briefly,  I  want  to  effect  a  synthesis  of  the 
American  mentality;  to  arrive  at  such  a  clarity 
as  will  enable  me  to  say,  "This  is  an  American 
idea"  with  as  much  assurance  as  I  now  say, 
"This  is  an  English  idea."  Now,  this  cannot  be 
done  by  coursing  between  railway  stations.  A 
man's  knowledge  is  not  measured  by  the  miles 
he  travels.  In  this  case  I  feel  that  all  I  can  do  is 
to  select  a  few  patches  of  America — viz..  New 
England,  New  York,  Chicago,  a  farm  in  Kansas, 
a  fruit  ranch  in  California,  an  oil  well  in  Oklahoma, 
a  Pennsylvania  mansion,  and  to  cancel  those  traits 
which  do  not  appear  in  all  of  them.     The  tend- 


4  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

encies,  the  ideas  which  recur  everywhere  will 
indicate  (as  nearly  as  human  vanity  can  tolerate 
truth)  the  main  lines  of  the  American  cosmos. 
Briefly,  I  want  to  co-ordinate  impressions,  and 
then  to  suggest  that  these  co-ordinations  make  up 
the  picture.  That  is  why  I  stand  in  Nashua, 
interested  in  two  old  Colonial  houses  whose  shal- 
low verandas  rest  on  slender  pillars;  I  cannot  see 
through  the  prudent  lace  of  the  curtains,  and  yet 
I  must  learn  to  see,  if  ever  I  am  to  understand  this 
American  people,  of  which  I  can  say  already  that 
it  finds  no  rival  to  its  charm,  except  its  strangeness. 
As  I  came  up  the  road  into  Nashua  from  the 
station  lower  on  the  line  I  had  an  instance  of 
strangeness:  I  found  a  man  lying  on  the  grass 
under  a  tree.  He  was  neither  smoking  nor  sleeping 
nor  reading.  He  merely  lay  under  a  tree,  pre- 
sumably thinking.  You  will  gauge  the  effect  upon 
me  of  the  three  days  in  New  York  and  the  four 
in  New  England  which  prefaced  this  incident 
when  I  tell  you  that  I  found  it  amazing  that  an 
American  should  lie  under  a  tree  doing  nothing. 
I  had  been  going  about  for  a  week,  and  while  in 
England  you  will  everywhere  behold  people  doing 
nothing  (and  doing  it  with  great  intensity),  in 
America  this  sad  spectacle  is  very  rare.  For  a 
moment  I  wondered  if  the  man  were  dead.  That 
would  be  one  explanation.     Or  he  might  be  Eng- 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  5 

lish,  which  would  be  another  explanation.  But 
he  hailed  me  to  ask  the  time  in  a  language  that 
is  fast  growing  familiar.  No,  the  idle  man  was 
American.  There  is  no  explanation;  so  I  enter 
him  here  as  the  exception  which  proves  the  rule 
that  Americans  are  always  active  because  they 
are  invariably  vital. 

Few  Americans  conceive  the  effect  of  their  vital- 
ity upon  the  English  writer  who  meditated  in 
Nashua.  At  first  America  was  awful.  It  was  like 
being  posted.  I  was  bagged  by  the  pier  officials, 
stamped  by  the  customs,  sorted  by  porters,  re- 
bagged  by  a  taxi,  restamped  by  the  reception 
clerk,  and  at  incredible  speed  delivered  into  a  bed- 
room through  something  that  looked  like  a  mine 
shaft.  And  the  Elevated  roared,  the  locomotives 
rang  their  bells,  the  trolley  cars  and  the  omnibuses 
rang  something  else.  And  when  I  tried  to  be 
funny  because  my  room  number  was  192 1,  and 
(forgetting  the  date)  said,  "That's  handy  to  re- 
member; same  number  as  the  year,"  the  porter 
reproved  me  with:  "No,  not  this  year.  Next 
year."  Even  my  bedroom  was  a  year  ahead  of 
the  period !    I  realized  that  I  really  was  in  America. 

It  isn't  so  bad  as  that  in  Nashua,  even  though 
it  possesses  factories.  But  even  here  there  is 
activity — things  are  made,  dispatched;  their  own- 
ers telephone;    women  think  of  careers;    young 


6  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

men  buy  automobiles;  and  people  walk  with  deci- 
sion, as  if  they  were  busier  in  Nashua  than  we  in 
London  town.  I  am  smitten  by  the  restlessness, 
the  enthusiasm,  the  passion  for  improvisation  of 
this  amazing  America;  I  realize,  vaguely,  all  sorts 
of  new  qualities  that  contradict  one  another — 
warm  heart  and  cool  mind,  audacity  and  prudence, 
organization  and  makeshift.  I  feel  an  America  so 
ruthless  that  she  will  strip  me  of  my  shirt,  an 
America  so  kindly  that  she  will  give  me  a  better 
shirt  than  I  could  buy.  As  if  among  the  nations 
she  were  Robin  Hood. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  the  pie  belt  would  be 
recommended  to  me  as  the  best  place  in  which  to 
study  America,  except  from  the  historical  point  of 
view.  But  recommendations  never  worry  very 
much  a  writer  who  acquires  his  facts  as  the  wolf 
gets  his  salt — viz.,  through  the  circulatory  system 
of  his  captures.  And  history  has  its  value  as  an  hors- 
d'oeuvre  before  the  more  important  dish  of  one's 
own  period.  I  began  with  New  England  so  as  to 
resist  the  overwhelming  pull  of  New  York,  and  I 
began  badly,  on  the  following  lines  of  Whittier: 

Oh !  may  never  a  son  of  thine, 
Where'er  his  wandering  steps  incline, 
Forget  the  sky  which  bent  above 
His  childhood,  like  a  dream  of  love, 
Or  hear  unmoved  the  taunt  of  scorn 
Breathed  o'er  the  brave  New  England  born. 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  7 

As  I  dislike  poetry — which  impresses  me  as  the 
coward's  escape  from  the  difficulties  of  prose, 
through  the  back  door  of  melody — I  cannot  say 
whether  this  is  one  of  the  couplets  that  should 
never  have  been  rhymed,  but  I  objected  to  its 
rhapsodic  air.  Also,  several  New-Englanders  at 
once  assured  me  that  their  childhood  was  not  over- 
hung by  a  dream  of  love.  But,  though  they  were 
all  sober  people,  who  evoked  the  gentler  side  of 
their  Scottish  temperament,  they  did  set  up  for 
me  another  picture,  which  I  venture  to  call  "The 
Hypnosis  of  History/1  of  "The  Legend  of  New 
England. "  Subsequently  a  few  New-Yorkers  and 
Westerners  showed  that  they  had  accepted  the 
legend. 

You  may  ask  what  I  mean  by  the  "hypnosis" 
of  history.  One  might  answer  in  a  sentence  that 
the  educated  American  is  infinitely  more  conscious 
of  his  national  origin  than  is  the  denizen  of  any 
other  part  of  the  world.  The  past  of  his  country 
acts  as  the  shadow  of  his  present  and  the  danger 
signal  of  his  future.  For  instance,  where  an 
American  can  trace  back  his  pedigree  several  gen- 
erations, he  will  almost  invariably  reveal  the  fact 
to  his  English  guest — exhibit  the  crest  on  his  signet 
ring,  the  arms  on  a  piece  of  old  plate,  and  dilate 
a  little  sentimentally  on  the  virtues  and  sufferings 
of  his  forebears.    One  strand  in  the  psychology  of 


8  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

this  impulse  is  undoubtedly  to  make  the  English 
visitor  feel  at  home  among  heirs  of  an  identical 
tradition;  the  other,  and  more  important  strand, 
is  the  romantic  reverence  the  American  feels  for 
the  pioneers.  America  knows  three  main  sources 
of  romance — love,  business,  and  the  pioneer. 

Thus,  the  American  gives  relief  to  traditions  that 
his  English  cousin  assumes  or  to  which  he  is  indif- 
ferent until  they  are  attacked;  in  the  matter  of 
descent  he  is  not  cynical,  and  seldom  holds  the 
French  point  of  view — that  it  may  be  as  well  if  one 
doesn't  know  one's  great-grandfathers,  as  one  of  the 
four  would  be  bound  to  be  disreputable.  Indeed, 
the  pedigreed  American,  call  himself  a  democrat 
if  he  likes,  knows  and  cares  much  more  about  the 
ancient  local  families  than  does  the  Englishman. 
As  a  rule,  he  knows  his  local  history;  he  entreats 
you  not  to  miss  Emerson's  house  at  Concord, 
describes  the  contents  of  the  Salem  East  India 
Museum,  and  knows  the  casualties  at  the  Lexing- 
ton riot.  Almost  invariably  he  forgets  the  South, 
and  seldom  has  a  memory  for  the  pioneers  who 
were  wiped  out  at  Jamestown;  the  Mayflower  and 
its  cargo  of  prayer  books  and  plowshares  serve  him 
as  the  mythology  that  all  men  must  create  who 
would  capture  illusion. 

It  is  mythology!  I  listen,  and  all  about  me  in 
the  hotel  youthful  Americans,  big  sophomores  and 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  9 

boyish  plebes,  fluffy  girls  and  young  matrons,  play 
golf,  tennis,  croquet;  ride,  bathe,  paddle  canoes, 
dance,  drive  automobiles,  airplanes;  but  also  de- 
clare that  So-and-so  is  on  the  pig's  back,  while 
Millicent  knows  how  to  hand  out  the  dope.  I 
listen  to  the  friend  who  describes  the  record  where 
it  is  stated  that  John  Robinson  .  .  .  and  wonder 
what  it  is  preserves  the  capacity  to  nurture  the 
belief  that  New  England  still  exists.  New  England 
does  not  seem  to  me  to  exist,  save  in  the  shape  of 
a  Newer  England  that  the  romantics  do  not  per- 
ceive. 

It  was  in  Salem  that  I  asked  myself  what  it  was 
supported  the  legend  of  New  England;  what 
mosses  held  together  the  roof  of  the  old  manse. 
This  does  not  mean  that  I  project  an  attack  on 
New  England,  but  it  must  be  recalled  that  an 
Englishman  cannot  be  as  much  impressed  by  Old 
America  as  by  New  America.  The  thing  America 
has  to  be  proud  of  is  not  its  past,  but  its  present, 
and  I  wish  that  I  could  whole-heartedly  say  that 
this  applies  to  England  too.  Still,  it  seems  that 
America  does  not  hold  this  view,  and  that  she  is 
still  attached  to  the  idea  of  old  Puritan  New 
England.  Even  in  Chicago,  even  in  half-Indian 
corners  of  Oklahoma,  I  find  reverence  for  New  Eng- 
land. And  when  I  consider  Chicago,  for  instance,  I 
am  amazed  that  anything  of  this  reverence  should 


io  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

survive.  I  suspect  that  the  moss  which  holds  to- 
gether the  old  manse  is  of  two  kinds.  One  is 
architectural. 

The  city-bred  American,  living  on  the  eighteenth 
floor  most  of  the  day,  naturally  feels  a  romantic 
attraction  for  the  wooden  cottages  that  lie  between 
New  York  and  Maine.  It  is  charming  architecture 
this  cottage  architecture  of  wooden  slats  painted 
white,  or  gray,  or  green,  or  even  yellow;  the 
verandas  supported  upon  fluted  pillars,  the  little 
Doric  pediments  and  cornices,  the  fanlights  over 
the  paneled  doors.  All  this  is  intimate;  and  when 
such  a  village  is  grouped  around  a  wooden  church 
which  in  miniature  recalls  the  designs  of  Sir  Chris- 
topher Wren,  one  understands  the  attraction  of 
what  I  venture  to  call  an  emotional  picture  post- 
card. And  of  the  more  massive  houses  (such  as 
those  of  Newport,  New  Hampshire),  and  many 
that  you  find  in  Salem  and  Concord,  comfortable, 
boxlike  edifices  of  brick,  with  a  palladian  magnifi- 
cence of  column  and  a  cool  purity  of  Colonial  style, 
all  this  is  rather  more  England  than  New  Eng- 
land, and  so  it  is  wonderful  that  it  should  help  to 
create  illusion. 

The  second  support  of  the  legend  of  New  Eng- 
land is,  I  suppose,  found  in  the  remains  of  the 
New  England  character.  This  character  has,  I 
hope,  not  been  defined  by  Mr.  Van  Wyck  Brooks, 


AT    THAT    AUCTION    I    MET    UNCLE    SAM 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  n 

who  says  that,  after  being  drained  of  vital  life 
into  the  West,  the  New  England  character  "passed 
into  the  condition  of  neurotic  anaemia  in  which  it 
has  remained  so  largely  to  this  day."  I  cannot  rival 
Mr.  Brooks  in  information,  but  I  will  venture  to 
confront  him  in  impression.  So  far  as  there  is  a 
New  England  character  it  suggests  to  me  a  rather 
Scottish  type:  there  is  in  the  speech  and  attitude 
of  the  New  England  farmer  an  air  of  moderation 
and  reserve,  tinged  with  a  little  suspicion,  and  in- 
formed with  a  certain  kindness. 

I  stayed  some  time  in  a  New  England  village 
and  all  did  whatever  I  wanted  them  to  do, 
but  invariably  after  saying  that  they  were  not 
quite  sure  it  could  be  done.  It  was  a  silent 
place,  whose  social  life  was  concentrated  round 
the  drug  store,  to  which  young  men  and  women 
seemed  to  escape  for  mild  giddiness  suitable  to 
their  age.  But,  in  the  main,  there  was  no  gid- 
diness. There  was  a  suggestion  that  here  were 
people  still  holding  on  hard  to  some  land  they 
had  conquered  with  difficulty.  Many  tales  were 
told  of  a  local  character  whom  I  will  call  Hiram 
Jebbison,  who,  in  the  view  of  the  village,  was  the 
real  New-Englander.  Hiram  was  a  wonderful  man. 
One  day  he  sold  a  local  landowner  some  buffaloes 
for  his  park.  The  beasts  went  sick,  and,  very 
kindly,  Hiram  offered  to  take  them  back.     He 


12  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

said  he  would  isolate  them  on  a  little  island  in  a 
lake,  which  belonged  to  him.  "Of  course,"  added 
Hiram,  "you  will  let  your  men  build  a  little  bridge 
to  the  island  for  me  to  get  them  over."  The  land- 
owner agreed.  Hiram  then  took  twenty  of  the 
landowner's  men,  tons  of  his  lumber,  and  built 
a  bridge.  When  that  was  done  he  told  the  land- 
owner that  of  course  the  buffaloes  would  want 
shelter.  The  landowner  agreed.  So  Hiram  took 
more  of  the  landowner's  men  and  more  tons  of 
his  lumber  to  build  a  shanty  on  the  island.  When 
the  buffaloes  felt  better,  Hiram  sold  them  to  some- 
body else;  then  he  sold  the  island,  the  bridge,  and 
the  shanty,  which  had  cost  him  nothing  at  all. 

That  might  be  a  Scotch  story.  Another  tale 
of  Hiram  is  Scotch  too:  A  raw  sportsman  from 
New  York  engaged  Hiram  to  go  hunting  elk. 
An  elk  was  shot,  and  the  amateur,  pretending  to 
know  all  about  it,  demanded  the  leg.  Hiram  said 
not  a  word,  gave  him  the  leg  and  kept  the  valuable 
part,  the  loin.  When  the  sportsman  complained 
that  he  had  been  unable  to  get  a  knife  into  his 
choice,  Hiram  merely  replied,  "I  could  have  told 
you  that";  but  he  had  said  nothing,  for  Hiram 
Jebbison  never  said  anything  unnecessary. 

I  suspect  that  these  traits  and  the  stories  they 
give  rise  to  help  to  sustain  the  legend  of  New 
England.    A  visit  to  a  remote  village  enhances  the 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  13 

legend.  There  was  an  auction  in  our  village,  one 
morning,  where  the  auctioneer  began  by  putting 
up  a  red  flag  marked  with  his  name.  Then  a 
small  boy  went  round  the  village,  languidly  beat- 
ing a  small  drum  to  announce  that  something  was 
going  to  happen.  Nothing  much  happened,  for  the 
sale  was  of  old  furniture,  spare  parts,  and  rusty 
nails.  But  two  things  were  interesting.  In  spite 
of  the  gabble  of  the  auctioneer,  "I've  fifty,  give 
me  sixty — Fve  only  the  fifty,  give  me  fifty-five,,, 
etc.,  no  bid  of  one  dollar  was  ever  made,  even  for 
articles  which  ended  at  ten.  The  cautious  New- 
Englander  always  started  at  fifty  cents,  and  no- 
body ever  raised  more  than  a  nickel.  The  other 
fact  was  that,  to  my  amazement,  at  that  auction 
I  met  Uncle  Sam.  I  thought  he  was  dead;  that 
he  had  been  replaced  by  the  new  American,  short 
and  sturdy,  inclined  to  stoutness,  with  a  round  or 
square  head,  and  rather  large  eyes.  But  Uncle 
Sam  still  lives  in  New  England  with  a  long,  tanned, 
hard  face,  a  bony  nose  and  a  goatee.  With  him 
came  Colonel  Cody,  with  his  ferocious  little  eye 
and  his  leg-of-mutton  beard.  Figures  of  legend! 
And  they  maintain  the  legend  in  the  mind — they 
will  not  maintain  it  long.  For  New  England  is 
dead.  It  is  being  slain  by  Newer  England,  by  an 
industrial  New  England  which  knows  nothing  of 
the  Pilgrim.    In  those  states  you  will  find  factories 


i4  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

that  are  twenty  to  thirty  years  old;  you  will  find 
new  industries.  Not  only  in  Connecticut,  at 
Bridgeport,  for  instance,  do  you  find  them  making 
the  gramophone,  or  building  engines,  but  at  all 
sorts  of  places  inland,  at  Nashua,  at  Lowell,  even 
about  the  sacred  precincts  of  Concord  and  Salem. 
A  visit  to  Salem  must  be  a  tragedy  for  the  senti- 
mentalist. You  go  along  Andover  Street,  or  Fed- 
eral Street,  or  into  Washington  Square,  and  look 
at  all  these  houses  of  gentlefolk,  their  pleasant  col- 
onnades; you  glance  at  the  settees  and  at  the 
Colonial  porches,  and  suddenly  you  emerge  into 
an  industrial  town  with  trolley  cars,  tenements, 
and  smokestacks.  A  crude  sign  by  the  railway 
says,  "Stop,  Look,  and  Listen."  One  still  more 
crude  merely  says,  "Look  Out."  Old  Salem  did 
not  have  to  look  out,  and  now,  to  my  mind,  it  is 
no  more.  It  is  no  more  because  the  old  New- 
Englander,  who  came  from  England  and  Scotland, 
has  been  completely  swamped  by  the  masses  of 
foreign  population  which  have  followed  the  fac- 
tories. I  met  Poles  in  Vermont,  Italians  in  Con- 
cord; Bridgeport  has  its  Hungarian — its  Chinese, 
quarter;  the  rasping  English  of  the  past  has  given 
place  to  the  lisping  languages  of  the  South  and 
East.  Near  the  ancient  grounds  stand  the  self- 
service  restaurants,  the  automatic  bars,  and  the 
movies.    The  movies  in  Salem! 


ONE    HAS    THE     IMPRESSION    OF    ALOOF    ARISTOCRACY    IN 
WHAT    REMAINS    OF    OLD    BOSTON 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  iS 

I  went  down  to  Marblehead,  and  I  saw  it  on  an 
exquisite  day,  when  the  sea  was  cygnet  gray, 
spangled  with  furled  sails,  and  a  mauve  mist  held 
over  the  islets  in  the  bay.  Romance  in  Herge- 
sheimerland  .  .  .  Lovis's  Cove,  and  the  landing  of 
the  British  .  .  .  this  illuminated  spot,  what  does  it 
mean  now?  I  don't  think  it  means  anything  at 
all.  The  immigrants  have  swept  it  all  away.  I 
know  that  the  romantic  will  reply  that  the  immi- 
grants came  because  sturdy  New  England  had 
established  democratic  freedom  in  this  corner  of  the 
world.  I  doubt  it.  The  Europeans  left  Europe 
because  they  were  fleeing  from  something  worse 
than  tyranny;  they  were  fleeing  from  poverty; 
indeed,  in  the  'forties  they  were  fleeing  from 
famine,  and,  later  on,  from  the  crowded  conditions 
of  their  own  birth  rate.  So  they  came  to  New 
England  and  went  to  the  West;  they  went  to 
the  warmer  lands  first,  and  that  is  why  they  came 
to  America  instead  of  to  Canada.  It  was  not  free- 
dom, but  free  land  which  brought  them  across 
the  Atlantic,  and  if  there  had  been  no  Revolution, 
if  the  United  States  to-day  were  a  British  dominion, 
the  immigrants  would  have  come  all  the  same. 

I  realize  that  the  rough  qualities  of  New  England 
have  leavened  the  whole  of  America,  for  already 
I  have  met  their  descendants  in  the  Middle  West, 
but  what  a  slight  leaven  it  is  among  these  enor- 


16  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

mous  masses  of  Scandinavians,  Germans,  Italians ! 
So  slight  that  the  New  England  speech  has  disap- 
peared in  the  rest  of  America,  that  the  lean  body 
has  been  obscured  by  a  sturdy  envelope,  the  cau- 
tious temperament  replaced  by  the  temperament 
of  the  most  dashing  commercial  adventurers  the 
world  has  seen.  New  England  made  the  beacon 
that  lighted  America,  but  it  was  a  beacon  made  of 
lumber;  now  modern  America  feeds  the  fire  with 
kerosene.  Nothing  remains  of  the  New  England 
influence  except  a  vacillating  Puritanism,  which 
comes  up  suddenly  in  the  prosecution  of  a  book,  in 
a  cry  against  skimpy  bathing  dresses — a  Puritanism 
which  leaps  up  and  down  like  the  flame  of  a  dying 
candle.  The  New  England  temperament  has  filled 
its  part  in  the  American  play;  history  is  not  likely 
to  cast  it  again. 

I  suppose  that  the  full  spirit  of  New  England  is 
now  to  be  found  in  Boston,  and  there  will  the  last 
ramparts  stand  when  all  the  nations  of  the  world, 
congregated  in  the  States,  come  lapping  round. 
One  has  the  impression  of  aloof  aristocracy  in  what 
remains  of  Old  Boston,  and  the  impression  is  all 
the  stronger  owing  to  the  invisibility  of  the  in- 
habitants. One  can  stand  in  Louisburg  Square,  and 
not  a  face  appears  at  the  windows.  I  ate  the 
bread  of  Bostonians,  and  so  may  not  speak  of 
them,  but  one,  a  stranger,  I  may  mention  and  do 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  17 

not  forget.  He  came  out  of  his  house  one  morning 
and  stood  upon  the  steps  for  a  moment,  looking 
to  the  right  and  left.  As  he  did  not  seem  to  know 
where  he  wanted  to  go,  I  felt  at  once  that  he 
must  be  an  aristocrat.  He  was  about  fifty,  well 
groomed,  with  rather  delicate  features,  and  he  car- 
ried a  small,  brown-paper  parcel  which  seemed  to 
embarrass  him.  When  he  perceived  me  he  flung 
me  a  look  of  such  dislike  that  I  wondered  whether 
he  might  not  be  English.  And  so  we  stood  for  a 
moment,  I  looking  at  him;  after  all,  a  cat  can  look 
at  a  Bostonian  aristocrat.  Then  I  asked  him  my 
way,  being  lost,  as  usual,  and  his  glance  revealed 
a  still  greater  repulsion.  He  was  quite  unlike  the 
ordinary  American  I  had  been  meeting,  who  goes 
out  of  his  way  to  show  you  yours,  who  takes  your 
arm,  draws  plans,  almost  offers  to  pay  your  car  fare. 
While  he  hesitated,  I  explained  that  I  was  a 
stranger  in  Boston,  and  a  change  came  over  his 
features.  "Oh,"  he  said,  doubtfully,  "are  you 
English?"  On  my  saying  "Yes"  the  change  grew 
more  marked,  and  I  perceived  that  it  was  a  virtue 
to  be  English,  We  talked  a  little  and,  as  if  guided 
by  an  instinct,  I  spoke  of  a  recent  visit  to  a  Sussex 
town  where  the  grass  grows  between  the  cobbles  of 
the  street.  The  aristocrat  then  gave  me  a  smile. 
Following  upon  a  compliment  addressed  to  his 
house,  he  opened  the  door  and  showed  me  his 


1 8  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

hall,  which  is  paneled  in  oak  and  delicately  fur- 
nished with  old  mahogany  and  ancient  china,  but 
he  did  not  ask  me  in,  as  would  have  a  modern 
American.     Instead,   he   talked   guardedly.     He 
even  advised  what  I  should  see  in  Boston  .  .  .  and 
he  recommended  nothing  that  did  not  lie  between 
the  Massachusetts  Hospital  and  Copley  Square; 
there  was  nothing  else.    When  I  told  him  that  I 
was  going  to  the  Middle  West  he  seemed  tempted 
not  to  reply.     Then,  hesitating,  "You  will  find  it 
strange. "     He  would  not  explain  any  more.     He 
did  not  want  to  bury  the  Middle  West,  but  he 
could  not  praise  it.    He  revealed  that  he  had  never 
been  west  of  Ohio,  but  he  had  paid  visits  to  Eng- 
land, Italy,  and  France.     His  wife,  it  appeared, 
was  an  American,  born  in  France.     So  we  ex- 
changed a  few  remarks  on  French  literature  and 
English  politics  that  were  not  very  profound,  until, 
as  he  expanded  on  his  homes  beyond  the  water, 
I  had  the  courage  to  ask  him  how  he  liked  living 
in  America.    I  think  he  was  a  little  shocked;  this 
was  obviously  one  of  the  things  one  did  not  dis- 
cuss.    He  tried  to  escape  me,  as  would  have  an 
Englishman,  by  talking  of  the  neighborhood,  of  the 
country  club,  alluding  to  horses,  and  praising  golf, 
but  I  persisted  in  my  investigation  until,  almost 
churlishly,  he  replied,  "Well,  one  need  only  mix 
with  the  people  one  likes. "  And  then  I  understood 


CHARMING,   COURTLY,    AND    CULTURED,  THESE    ARISTOCRATS    SEEM    TO    BE 

ONLY    SHADOWS 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  19 

him;  I  understood  his  reluctant  love  for  changing 
America.  I  was  able  to  imagine  the  life  of  these 
surviving  Anglo-Americans,  whose  visiting  list 
spreads  only  a  mile,  excepting  cousins  at  Lexing- 
ton; who  still  drink  tea;  who  say  "Bosston,"  and 
not  "Bawston";  who  keep  their  paneled  door  tight 
locked,  and  behind  it  live  persistently  in  lavender 
and  dimity;  who  have  an  account  with  a  book- 
seller in  Piccadilly;  who  receive  letters  edged  with 
an  inch  of  black  when  a  French  marquis  dies; 
whose  sons  go  to  Harvard,  failing  Oxford,  and 
marry  the  daughter  of  a  dean,  see  their  incomes 
shrink,  and  live  on,  disdainful  and  forgotten,  under 
the  shadow  of  an  academic  wall,  and  are  gentle- 
men to  the  end. 

For,  indeed,  as  I  came  to  understand  better  the 
great  Irish  city  which  hides  under  the  old  English 
reputation  of  Boston,  I  cannot  help  feeling,  and 
I  felt  it  without  undue  regret,  that  the  remaining 
representatives  of  the  period  of  organdie,  port 
wine,  and  square  dances  are  milestones  on  the 
road  which  leads  back  three  periods  in  a  country 
where  no  man  and  no  woman  seem  to  run  the 
risk  of  ever  being  turned  into  a  pillar  of  salt. 
Charming,  courtly,  and  cultured,  these  aristocrats 
seem  to  be  only  shadows.  They  are  the  end,  and 
upon  their  graves  can  be  inscribed  as  a  parody 
of  Kosciuszko  the  words,  "Finis  Bostonia!" 


2o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

The  legend  of  New  England  is  not  the  only  one 
which  the  traveling  Englishman  encounters.  He 
also  has  to  reckon  with  what  I  may  call  the  legend 
of  Boston.  But  there  is  a  difference:  the  legend 
of  New  England  he  discovers  only  when  he  reaches 
the  American  shores;  the  legend  of  Boston  he 
brings  in  his  own  kit  bag.  It  is  rather  a  difficult 
legend  to  define.  More  or  less,  the  English  idea 
of  Boston  is  that  it  is  an  England  beyond  the 
water,  the  place  where  academic  learning  is 
supreme;  where  refinement,  tea  parties,  Toryism, 
mingle  with  vestiges  of  fox  hunting  into  producing 
an  agreeable  England  of  the  George  III  period. 
The  Englishman  is  convinced,  as  a  rule,  that  out- 
side Boston  there  exist  in  America  no  manners, 
but  only  morals;  that  Boston  is  included  in  the 
United  States  only  by  a  misunderstanding;  and 
that  it  is  the  spiritual  home  of  the  deans  of  Har- 
vard; it  is,  shall  we  say,  Sussex  or  Westmoreland. 
The  casting  of  those  tea  chests  into  Boston  Harbor 
on  a  fine  morning  in  the  eighteenth  century  is  for- 
gotten. Briefly,  the  Englishman  feels  affectionate 
about  Boston,  affectionate  to  the  point  of  senti- 
mentality. 

Now,  this  is  not  entirely  untrue,  and  I  think  I 
perceived  this  ghost  of  Boston  an  hour  after  I 
arrived.  It  was  a  Sunday  morning,  and  under 
my  window  passed  a  little  elderly  lady  dressed 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  21 

in  satin  of  a  color  that  was  something  between 
pink  and  mauve.  The  costume  included  a  very 
tight  bodice,  with  a  collar  closing  about  the  neck, 
and  the  front  part  was  abundantly  garnished 
with  white  embroidery.  On  the  top  of  her  head 
was  a  little  pork-pie  hat.  Between  her  small 
hands,  gloved  in  kid,  she  carried  a  prayer  book 
and  a  hymn  book.  Her  boots  I  could  not  see  (in 
her  period  one  did  not  see  a  lady's  boots),  but  they 
may  have  been  elastic-sided.  As  she  trotted  off 
I  told  myself,  "There  goes  the  slender  ghost  of 
England's  own  Boston."  Indeed,  the  Boston  of 
old  is  fairly  well  sustained  if  one  is  careful  to  visit 
only  those  parts  of  Boston  which  are  haunted  by 
the  ghosts.  Superficially,  Old  Boston  does  support 
the  illusion  that  it  is  Old  England.  In  the  first 
place,  the  town  is  built  of  brick  or  of  some  solid 
material  plastered  with  terra  cotta.  Some  of  the 
middle  nineteenth-century  portions  look  just  like 
the  worst  examples  of  South  Kensington  archi- 
tecture, or  even  Dublin,  which,  as  all  English  peo- 
ple know,  is  the  most  Victorian  of  our  cities. 

Farther  on,  quite  close  to  well-to-do  houses, 
you  find  slums  that  might  come  straight  from 
Westminster,  black,  tumble-down,  and  sordid. 
Then,  suddenly,  you  encounter  Beacon  Street  and 
Louisburg  Square,  and  Mount  Vernon  Street; 
there,  among  the  flat,  Colonial  windows  and  the 


22  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

exquisite  fanlights,  the  whole  thing  hardly  modi- 
fied by  the  demands  of  the  hot  weather,  you  tell 
yourself  again:  "This  is  not  America.  This  is 
Bath."  Indeed,  one  might  sum  up  by  saying  that 
Old  Boston  is  a  cross  between  Brighton  and  Edin- 
burgh. And  very  magnificent  it  is.  It  has  an  air 
of  repose,  as  if  it  slept  after  action.  The  only 
error  which  the  Englishman  makes  is  when  he 
thinks  that  some  day  it  may  wake  up. 

A  good  way  for  the  Englishman  to  maintain 
the  illusion  is  to  go  to  Harvard.  He  is  pretty 
clear  that  Harvard  is  an  inferior  sort  of  Oxford, 
that  it  has  a  certain  illegitimate  relationship 
with  the  English  institutions.  He  is  ready  to  be 
rather  kind  to  Harvard  because  he  has  heard  of 
the  wild  and  woolly  colleges  of  Wisconsin  and 
Illinois,  and  has  a  vision  of  academic  seclusion 
contrasted  with  an  orgy  of  college  yells.  He  feels 
that  Harvard  is  rather  respectable,  and  when  he 
is  very  well  informed  he  considers  that  Yale  also 
is  quite  nice,  being,  shall  we  say,  a  cousin  fortu- 
nately twice  removed.  So  everything  depends 
upon  whether  your  Englishman  enters  America 
via  Boston  or  via  New  York.  If  he  comes  in  via 
Boston  he  stays  in  his  mood  of  good-tempered 
patronage,  and  says  that  Harvard  is  not  a  bad 
little  show;  but  if  he  comes  in  via  New  York,  if 
he  has  been  chased  by  the  trolley  cars,  hurled  up 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  23 

to  the  twenty-third  floor,  and  terrified  by  automo- 
biles which  unreasonably  insist  on  taking  the  right 
side  of  the  road,  he  reaches  Harvard  in  a  state  of 
extreme  relief.  He  feels  this  is  home.  For  my 
part,  whose  interest  in  America  is  not  at  all  repre- 
sented by  tea  trays  and  fluted  pillars,  but  by  fac- 
tories where  they  can  pork,  I  did  not  have  that 
sense  of  relief.  I  found  Harvard  charming,  with 
its  green  spaces  and  the  gay,  boxlike  red  buildings 
which  are  dotted  about;  I  liked  what  one  may 
call  the  domestic  shape  of  this  university.  It  is 
intimate,  concentrated;  indeed,  it  seems  to  have 
rallied;  that  is  an  important  point  in  the  psy- 
chological picture  of  America  which  I  am  trying 
to  arrive  at.  To  an  Englishman  Harvard  (Harvard 
and  Yale  are  in  the  same  case)  does  not  look 
like  a  typical  university,  because  to  an  Englishman 
a  university  must  be  made  up  of  Gothic  buildings. 
Harvard  (and  I  thank  the  Stars  and  Stripes  for 
this)  is  not  Gothic.  It  is  Georgian,  and  it  has  the 
solid,  deliberate  air  of  the  part  of  London  which 
we  call  the  Temple.  It  possesses  one  building  of 
extreme  beauty — Hollis  Hall — one  of  the  purest 
specimens  of  Georgian  architecture  that  I  have 
ever  seen,  for  it  is  strong  and  at  the  same  time  it 
is  light.  It  makes  an  effective  contrast  with  Emer- 
son Hall,  which  seems  to  have  been  built  on  plans 
taken  from   the   waste-paper  baskets   of  several 


24  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

architects.  But  stones,  after  all,  do  not  define 
a  university. 

My  impression  of  Harvard  is  taken  rather  from 
a  few  young  men,  notably  a  dignified  sophomore 
and  several  rather  noisy  plebes,  with  whom  I  spent 
a  week  in  a  small  hotel  in  New  Hampshire.  They 
are  attractive,  this  generation  that  is  being  pro- 
duced by  Harvard;  their  manners  are  charming, 
frank,  diffident,  curiously  inclined  toward  the  Eng- 
lish attitude.  There  is  a  difference,  of  course,  for 
nobody  seems  able  to  breathe  the  air  of  Columbia, 
even  when  it  is  as  rarefied  as  it  is  in  Boston,  without 
something  of  the  champagne  standard  imposing 
itself  upon  the  barley-water  point  of  view  of  our 
typical  Oxford  tutor.  Having  since  that  time 
come  into  contact  with  the  fuller-blooded  product 
of  Chicago,  Evanston,  and  Wisconsin  universities, 
I  am  conscious  that  Harvard  represents,  as  I  sug- 
gested before,  a  rally  of  Old  America  against  the 
rush  of  New  America.  There  seems  to  be  in  the 
mind  of  the  young  Harvard  man  a  desire  to  main- 
tain the  value  of  learning  for  the  sake  of  learning, 
and  perhaps  to  them  applies  the  famous  toast  of 
the  English  professor,  who  raised  his  glass  and  said, 
"Here's  to  pure  mathematics  and  may  they  never 
be  of  any  damn  good  to  anybody." 

By  which  I  do  not  mean  that  Harvard  is  as 
detached  from  the  current  of  American  life  as 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  25 

some  of  its  detractors  make  out.  Harvard  repre- 
sents to  me  what  I  would  call  a  semicolon  in  the 
American  phrase.  It  represents  American  reflec- 
tiveness and  American  abstraction.  Its  under- 
graduates offer  a  very  sharp  contrast  with  the 
Yale  men,  some  of  whom  I  met  in  Bridgeport, 
Connecticut,  and  others  whom  I  encountered  in 
the  Middle  West.  The  Yale  man,  though  it  is 
dangerous  to  generalize,  strikes  me  as  the  com- 
promise between  Old  America  and  New  America; 
If  Harvard  is  a  semicolon  in  the  American  phrase, 
then  Yale  is  the  hyphen  between  the  old  phrase 
and  the  new.  It  is  exactly  in  America  in  the 
same  position  as  Cambridge  University  is  in  Eng- 
land. Yale  seems  to  be  trying  to  make  the  best  of 
both  worlds,  the  Old  and  the  New,  while  Harvard 
lifts  a  quite  virile  voice  in  defense  of  the  Old  World, 
being  willing  to  give  to  the  New  one  nothing  more 
than  hostages.  The  importance  of  these  old  uni- 
versities lies  in  their  definition  of  Boston,  for 
Yale  may  be  at  New  Haven,  and  yet  it  is  quite 
sufficiently  within  the  orbit  of  New  England.  The 
main  import  of  these  universities  is  that  they  are 
still  registering  a  protest  against  the  America 
which  insists  on  being  born.  Though  Harvard 
does  not  look  upon  the  baby  with  aversion,  and 
though  Yale  seems  quite  willing  to  take  its  share 
in  nursing  it,  both  of  them  are,  to  a  certain  extent, 


26  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

anachronistic.  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  in 
America  everything  tends  to  become  an  anachro- 
nism unless  it  has  been  created  in  the  current  year. 
People  say  that  America  has  no  past;  that  is  not 
quite  true,  but  what  seems  to  be  true  is  that 
America  scraps  her  past  as  she  goes.  She  is  like  a 
soldier  on  the  march  who  throws  aside  impedi- 
menta so  as  to  get  quicker  to  his  goal. 

Several  times,  as  I  went  back  to  my  hotel,  I 
encountered  in  Copley  Square  an  unstirred  Italian 
who  reclined  against  a  barrow  laden  with  grapes. 
They  were  rather  nice-looking  grapes,  at  twenty 
cents  a  pound,  and,  wishing  to  be  very  American, 
I  merely  said  to  him,  "Half."  He  filled  my  bag, 
maintaining  in  his  mouth  a  corncob  pipe,  and  took 
my  ten  cents  without  a  word.  Day  after  day  the 
Italian  so  remained  in  Copley  Square,  always  in  the 
same  attitude,  his  pipe,  by  some  magic,  always 
laden,  his  barrow  always  covered,  apparently  by 
the  same  grapes.  People  went  into  the  free  library, 
the  trolley  cars  rattled  by,  and  a  passing  dean  no 
doubt  resisted  the  temptation  to  eat  fruit  in  the 
street;  the  Italian  cared  for  none  of  these  things. 
He  was  there  when  I  arrived;  he  was  the  last  thing 
I  noticed  as  I  left  Boston.  I  could  not  help  thinking 
that  this  intruder,  so  assured,  so  completely  estab- 
lished in  the  ancient  city,  represented  the  army 
of  occupation  which  has  taken  over  Old  Boston. 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  27 

Old  Boston  survives.  You  will  see  it,  for  instance, 
in  the  exquisite  State  House,  a  classical  Georgian 
building  in  white  stone  which  shows  what  the 
National  Gallery  in  London  might  have  been  if  it 
had  been  built  by  the  artist  who  created  the  State 
House.  It  survives,  yes,  as  the  shell.  But  a  man 
who  did  not  read  the  signs  of  New  Boston  must 
indeed  be  blind.  Let  him  leave  the  State  House 
and  go  down  to  Boston  Common.  There  he  may 
be  charmed  or  amused  by  listening  to  a  speaker 
who  is  trying  to  agitate  an  entirely  listless  public 
against  the  danger  of  Mormonism  in  the  States; 
he  may  smile  at  the  old  loafer  concealed  within  a 
wooden  swan,  who  works  treadles  with  his  feet 
and  thus  paddles  people  on  the  ornamental  water; 
he  will  think  the  old  fellow  a  curious  version  of 
Lohengrin,  but  he  must  not  ignore  the  signs  of 
New  Boston  built  on  the  ruins  of  the  Old. 

On  that  Common  he  will  find  some  newly  seeded 
grass  into  which  is  stuck  a  board.  And  this  board 
does  not  say,  "Please  Keep  Off  the  Grass,"  as  it 
does  in  Hyde  Park;  the  New  Boston  board  says: 
"  Keep  Off  the  Grass.  If  you  want  to  roam,  join 
the  Navy."  That  is  not  at  all  how  they  would  have 
put  it  in  the  days  of  Emerson.  Also,  in  the  days 
of  Emerson,  assuming  there  had  been  a  subway, 
there  would  not  have  been  in  Boston  the  feverish 
commerciality  which  has  now  created  shops  on 


28  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

the  platforms.  And,  what  is  much  more  important, 
in  the  days  of  Emerson  you  would  not  have  paral- 
leled the  phenomenon  which  is  exposed  in  the 
Boston  telephone  book.  Happening  to  want  the 
telephone  number  of  a  person  whose  name  began 
with  "O,"  I  came  upon  the  name,  "O'Brien. "  I 
turned  the  page,  and  it  was  still  " O'Brien. "  The 
next  page  was  inexorably  still  "O'Brien."  Becom- 
ing haunted,  I  roughly  counted  the  O'Briens;  in 
Boston  there  are  480  O'Briens  on  the  telephone. 
That  means  that  there  are  at  least  5,000  O'Briens 
not  on  the  telephone;  that  with  the  families, 
20,000  Bostonians  are  called  O'Brien.  Well,  add 
the  O'Bynes,  the  O'Connors,  the  O'Donnels,  etc., 
and  what  is  the  conclusion?  Boston  is  an  Irish 
city.  If  it  is  Finis  Bostonia,  it  is  the  beginning 
of  Limerick.  It  is  also,  if  I  can  trust  my  ears, 
the  beginning  of  New  Russia,  New  Berlin,  New 
Bohemia,  and  New  Italy.  In  other  words,  Boston 
has  not  escaped  the  fate  of  cities  more  renowned 
for  foreign  immigration.  It  has  become  as  foreign 
a  city  as  Chicago,  and  it  is  only  because  something 
of  its  old  tradition  clings  to  it  that  people  believe 
that  Boston  is  still  Boston. 

I  spoke  to  some  Bostonians  about  this,  and  none 
of  them  denied;  indeed,  they  are  sufficiently  im- 
pressed not  even  to  deplore  it.  They  are  resigned; 
they  realize  that  the  Boston  in  which    they   live 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  29 

is  a  precarious  delusion;  they  do  not  even  main- 
tain hypocrisy,  and  when  people  give  up  hypocrisy 
they  are  giving  up  much  of  their  pride.  All  over  the 
northeast  of  America  something  new  is  rising.  In 
Connecticut,  especially,  and  even  in  the  north  of 
Vermont,  you  will  find  the  foreign  worker  over- 
whelming the  Yankee  farmer,  driving  his  sons  out 
of  work  and  making  his  sons  such  as  himself,  modi- 
fying the  physical  type  of  the  Yankee;  you  see 
the  factory  buildings  of  the  New  America  turn 
Bridgeport  into  a  great  industrial  city;  and  now, 
if  you  cross  Charles  River  into  the  poorer  and  the 
more  industrial  Boston,  you  discover,  not  the  pre- 
tenders you  met  on  Beacon  Hill,  but  the  sky- 
scrapers and  the  smokestacks  overtopping  the 
librarians  and  the  catalogues.  The  story  is  simple 
enough.  New  England — and  by  New  England  I 
mean  all  the  country  that  lies  northeast  of  New 
York  (despite  the  people  who  would  confine  New 
England  to  a  little  district  which  lies  between 
Gloucester,  Worcester,  and  Plymouth) — was  the 
industrial  nursery  of  the  United  States,  and  no 
doubt  it  went  on  very  nicely,  with  hand  labor  and 
elementary  machinery,  up  to  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century;  but  the  New  America  insisted 
on  pushing  out  toward  the  west,  toward  the  fort 
surrounded  by  shacks,  brand-new  stores,  and  rough 
Lake  piers  which  is  now  Chicago.    Coal  and  iron 


3o  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

appeared  in  Pennsylvania,  oil,  natural  gas;  the 
little  railway  which  had  united  Boston  with  Salem 
found  a  terrible  brother  in  the  steely  serpent  which 
threw  out  its  head,  not  only  toward  Chicago,  but 
across  the  prairie  toward  the  desert  of  Nebraska. 
Swiftly  industry  arose  in  Pittsburgh  and  in  Illinois. 
Those  people  had  no  traditions;  they  had  no  old 
factories,  no  old  plants.  They  had  all  their  brains, 
all  their  energy,  and  no  old  habits  to  hamper  them. 
Thus  there  arose  outside  New  England  a  new 
mechanical  industry  which  very  soon  began  to 
promise  ruin  to  the  little  factories  of  Massachu- 
setts. They  would  have  been  ruined  probably 
through  another  cause,  which  was  the  loss  of  their 
water  power,  when  the  demand  for  pulp  for  paper 
compelled  the  cutting  down  of  the  forest  of  the 
north;  it  was  the  coal  of  West  Virginia  that  saved 
New  England,  but  it  was  the  example  of  the  West, 
and  especially  of  Detroit,  which  induced  New 
England  to  save  itself.  It  has  saved  itself,  and  I 
spent  a  long  day  in  the  factories  of  Bridgeport, 
particularly  at  the  American  Chain  Company,  to 
see  the  most  modern  automatic  plant  turning  out 
tire  chains;  and  I  saw  an  almost  human  dynamo 
in  Massachusetts,  a  dynamo  which  warns  the  negli- 
gent human  being  when  it  is  overloaded,  and  even 
switches  itself  off  when  it  feels  itself  dangerously 
handled.     Thus   New   England   has   saved   itself 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  31 

from  the  industrial  point  of  view,  but  in  so  doing 
it  has  transmuted  itself.  The  metaphor  of  grub, 
chrysalis,  and  butterfly  is  apt  to  the  transformation 
of  Boston  am:  the  surrounding  states.  The  old- 
fashioned  people  will  no  doubt  say  that  industrial 
New  England  is  now  in  the  unpleasant  grub  state, 
and  that  the  land  we  know  is  the  painful  result 
of  the  sober  butterfly  which  once  hovered  above 
the  beautiful  cottage  roofs  of  Concord.  For  my 
part,  I  doubt  it,  because  it  seems  to  me  that 
modern  industry  is  the  soldier  who  will  conquer 
beauty  and  ease  of  life  for  all  men,  while  the  old 
times  merely  possessed  beauty  and  comfort  for  a 
few  men. 

The  spectacle  of  New  England  to-day,  and  even 
the  spectacle  of  Boston,  with  its  swarming  tene- 
ments, its  crowds  of  yelling  children,  its  resound- 
ing trolley  cars,  all  this  is  really  sane  and  splendid 
and  full  of  promise  for  a  luminous  future.  I  weep 
no  tears  over  Old  Boston  that  lies  in  its  own  dust, 
nor  smile,  for  instance,  at  the  Boston  Mushroom 
Society.  Boston  still  stands  for  good  taste  and 
for  the  appreciation  of  learning.  Only  it  is  danger- 
ous to  concentrate  upon  academic  Boston,  because 
one  may  easily  forget  that  within  twenty  years,  if 
Boston  develops  on  its  actual  lines,  it  will  be  a  great 
industrial  city. 

The   modernism  of  Boston   is   found   quite   as 


32  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

easily  as  its  age.  For  instance,  in  the  trolley  cars 
you  are  requested  to  report  not  only  cases  of  dis- 
courtesy on  the  part  of  conductors,  but  also  you 
are  asked  to  report  commendable  acts.  That  is  a 
revolution;  for  the  old  point  of  view  as  to  labor, 
which  prevails  in  Europe,  is  that  it  should  be  pun- 
ished when  it  does  wrong,  while  the  broad  Amer- 
ican point  of  view  is  infinitely  more  human 
(though  none  the  less  mercenary);  it  holds  that 
men  work  best  when  they  are  treated  in  a  human 
way.  Old  Boston  would  never  have  thought  of 
congratulating  its  conductors.  It  is  New  Boston, 
absorbing  the  business  theories  of  the  West,  which 
seeks  to  develop  in  its  employees  the  human  quali- 
ties of  courtesy  and  kindness.  I  do  not  suppose 
these  remarks  will  mean  much  to  my  American 
readers,  for  they  are  accustomed  to  that  point  of 
view,  but  to  an  Englishman  they  are  startling. 

Startling,  too,  is  another  item  in  Boston — 
namely,  the  office  of  the  Christian  Science  Monitor. 
It  is  the  most  amazing  newspaper  office  in  the 
world;  the  walls  are  white,  the  floors  are  made  of 
parquet,  and  carpeted.  When  you  go  in  you  think 
you  are  going  into  a  government  department  closed 
for  the  night.  But  if  you  enter  the  subeditor's 
room  you  discover  a  large  place,  with  about  ten 
desks.  Now,  in  most  other  newspaper  offices  you 
find  dirty,  whitewashed  walls,  tables  stained  with 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  33 

the  ink  and  carved  by  the  knives  of  generations, 
masses  of  dusty  papers,  six  weeks'  torn  issues  on 
the  floor,  mixed  with  the  dottels  of  pipes  and  hun- 
dreds of  cigarette  stubs.  Everybody  bellows. 
Everybody  smokes.    Nearly  everybody  swears. 

At  the  Christian  Science  Monitor  all  work 
placidly  at  desks  as  neat  as  those  of  sinecurists; 
there  is  no  bustle;  there  is  no  noise.  In  the  com- 
posing room,  even,  the  compositors  are  clean  and 
collected;  the  only  noise  the  Christian  Scientists 
have  been  unable  to  repress  is  that  of  the  linotype 
machine.  Do  what  they  will,  it  insists  upon  clank- 
ing. Well,  I  do  not  want  to  make  out  that  the 
Christian  Science  Monitor  is  an  indication  of  Finis 
Bostonia,  but  in  reality  it  does  amount  to  that, 
because  the  Monitor  point  of  view  is  the  top  notch 
of  industrial  work.  It  represents  the  discovery 
that  industry  need  not  be  noisy,  dirty,  and  fero- 
cious. Some  may  think  that  the  roaring  factories 
are  more  damaging  to  Old  Boston,  but  for  my  part 
I  suspect  that  this  well-oiled  organization  goes  a 
step  farther  and  indicates  the  form  which  indus- 
try is  going  to  take;  in  that  sense,  perhaps,  the 
calm  sweetness  of  the  labor  of  that  office  is  attend- 
ant upon  the  funeral  of  the  dusty  and  musty  libra- 
ries. The  smoke-belching  factories  may  be  carry- 
ing Old  Boston  to  its  grave,  but  the  harmonious 
organization  of  this  extraordinary  modern  office  is 


34  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

laying  a  delicate  wreath  of  flowers  upon  Old  Bos- 
ton's grave.  It  is  a  significant  contrast  after  the 
Monitor  to  go  and  see  Old  Boston  trying  to  be  New 
Boston  in  the  shape  of  the  Massachusetts  General 
Hospital. 

You  find  a  large  site  administered  on  spacious 
lines  housing  only  360  beds.  It  gives  a  good  ex- 
ample by  treating  its  nurses  well;  the  nurses' 
quarters  are  fit  to  live  in  (which,  in  England,  is 
seldom  the  case)  and  the  nurses  are  not  sweated. 
But  what  is  interesting  is  the  elderly  quality  of  it 
all.  I  know  that  there  is  nothing  elderly  in  the 
medical  school  of  the  hospital,  which  is  practically 
the  same  as  that  of  Harvard,  but  there  is,  through 
moderate  payments,  a  maintenance  of  an  air  of 
gentility.  At  the  Massachusetts  Hospital  patients 
are  still  selected;  they  are  still  investigated.  It 
represents  something  that  was  fine — namely,  the 
development  of  so  much  charity  among  the  rich; 
that  was  suitable  enough  to  the  graceful  feudalism 
of  Old  Boston  city.  But  in  the  New  Boston  that 
is  lifting  its  voice  in  a  cry  that  may  ultimately 
equal  the  shout  of  Chicago  it  represents  nothing 
but  survival,  and  one  wonders  if  it  will  survive. 

Of  course  it  will  not  survive,  for  nothing  sur- 
vives, and  each  one  of  us  takes  his  turn.  Boston 
may  yet  snatch  from  the  hand  of  Chicago  the 
torch  of  progressive  industry,  while  Chicago  may 


IN  OLD  AMERICA  35 

become  rich  enough  to  give  more  thought  to  the 
immaterial;  it  will  be  able  to  afford  that  luxury. 
Boston  may  pass  from  the  tradition  of  James 
Russell  Lowell  to  the  new  one  of  Miss  Amy  Lowell, 
while  Chicago  may  cease  to  respond  to  the  verse 
of  Mr.  Carl  Sandburg  to  turn  to  the  polished 
rhymes  of  some  new  Keats.  The  new  poet,  looking 
out  over  Michigan  Boulevard,  may  dream  of 
Boston  and  pen  melancholy  lines  to  a  Grecian  urn. 
Just  as  I  left  Boston,  in  a  noisy  modern  street, 
I  found  a  saloon.  All  was  complete,  the  bar  still 
carrying  its  signs  of  whisky  and  of  beer,  the  seats 
in  front  of  it,  upon  their  stumps,  but  no  longer 
laden,  the  brass  rod  worn  by  feet,  and  the  red- 
plush  settees,  where  some  rested  after  drinks  and 
some  waited  before.  There  was  nobody  there. 
Where  the  bottles  used  to  stand  are  boards  which 
offer  beef  hash  for  twenty  cents  and  stuffed  pepper 
for  ten.  No  more  free  lunch  since  liquor  has  gone, 
which  warranted  that  freedom.  Nothing  now  but 
emptiness  and  dust.  It  seemed  to  me  that  this 
desertion  of  the  old  saloon,  child  of  the  taverns 
where  the  clipper  captains  used  to  meet  to  drink, 
I  suppose  mulled  claret  and  canary  wine,  is  as 
significant  of  Finis  Bostonia  as  the  installation  of 
the  most  modern  repetition  plant.  For  here  is  a 
revolution  in  the  mind,  which  matters  more  than 
a  revolution  in  the  workshop.     The  old  saloon 


36  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

meant  as  much  to  Boston  as  the  learned  ones  who 
paced  the  greensward  at  Cambridge;  it  was  part  of 
the  same  adventurous  individual  life,  where  a  man 
took  a  single  chance  and,  when  he  succeeded,  took 
his  pleasure.  Now,  Boston  is  socialized  indus- 
trially, and  a  new  impulse  toward  efficiency  has 
turned  away  the  flow  of  its  people  from  the  taverns 
where  it  used  to  royster.  It  is  not  age  which  has 
killed  Boston,  for  no  cities  die  of  age;  it  is  the 
youth  of  other  cities,  of  young  America,  who  would 
not  let  Old  Boston  live  unless  it  transformed  itself 
as  it  is  doing.  So  the  old  saloon  is  closed.  Or  no, 
it  is  more  significant  than  that.  The  Old  Boston 
saloon  has  its  door  ajar.  It  is  still  open,  but 
hardly  so. 


> 


'I 

II 

AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING 

THERE  is  no  peace  in  Chicago.  In  Chicago 
the  past  and  the  future  give  birth  to  an 
unruly  being  that  angrily  shakes  the  fetters  of 
one  tradition  as  it  creates  another  which  it  throws 
away  as  it  goes,  like  a  snake  which  wearies  of  its 
skin  and  sloughs  it  off  for  a  new  one.  It  is  a  city 
of  terror  and  light,  untamed  and  unwearied.  It 
has  harnessed  a  white-hot  energy  to  beginnings; 
upon  its  roofs  it  erects  cities;  it  has  torn  the  vitals 
of  its  streets  for  railway  cuttings,  set  up  porticoes 
as  promises  of  colonnades.  Grim  is  the  heart 
within,  and  hot  as  molten  metal.  The  city  writhes 
in  its  narrow  communications,  as  the  head  of 
Medusa  among  its  tangled  hair.  Its  suburbs  lie 
like  disjointed  members,  deprived  of  easy  transit 
to  the  body:  the  suburban  stores  forbid  it;  they 
fear  for  their  custom,  and  the  politicians  tumble 
and  crawl  in,  graft,  threat,  and  proclamation,  over 
the  great  body  that  heaves,  angry  and  chafed,  yet 
negligent  of  what  is  not  its  daily  labor,  like  a  dray 
horse  with  bent  head  that  shakes  the  tenacious 

4 


38  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

flies.  Here  is  room  for  lust  and  its  repression, 
none  for  listlessness;  here  is  everlasting  struggle, 
no  mild  aspiration  to  pbace.  There  is  no  peace  in 
Chicago.  .  .  . 

In  my  first  chapter  I  recorded  impressions  of 
the  Land  of  the  Bean  and  the  Cod,  but  now,  with 
the  Middle  West  before  me,  dazing  me  by  the  clash 
of  its  trolley  cars,  blinding  me  with  the  fire  and 
cloud  of  its  smokestacks,  I  hesitate.  I  hesitate 
partly  because  the  Middle  West  is  big,  because 
it  is  real,  and  because,  erected  upon  the  pedes- 
tal of  its  worth,  America  attendant  upon  its  tri- 
umph, it  may  not  care  to  be  analyzed  at  all. 
For  it  is  a  fable  that  the  truly  great  tolerate 
criticism;  nearly  all  detest  it.  Already  I  have 
earned  trouble,  hardly  by  criticizing  America,  but 
by  alluding  to  her.  In  my  new  novel,  Caliban,  I 
make  two  allusions  to  America,  and  only  two.  In 
one  case  I  mention  a  Miss  Daisy  Hogstein  of  Chi- 
cago. I  say  nothing  about  her.  I  merely  mention 
her.  And  immediately  a  newspaper  discusses  the 
carping  spirit  in  which  the  English,  etc.  In  another 
place  I  say  that  my  hero,  Lord  Bulmer,  the  ruth- 
less newspaper  proprietor,  would  have  been  hap- 
pier in  America  than  in  England,  a  remark  which 
applies  to  a  good  many  men.  Three  newspapers 
violently  deny  that  such  a  person  would  ever  have 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         39 

been  tolerated  in  a  free  republic  which,  etc.  Again, 
in  Boston,  during  the  Mayflower  celebration,  I 
shyly  pointed  out  that  the  early  Virginians  should 
also  be  remembered.  A  blast  from  Boston  inti- 
mates that  an  Englishman,  instead  of  talking  of 
the  things  he  doesn't  understand,  etc. 

What  am  I  to  do?  Am  I  to  take  the  advice  of 
a  gentleman  I  met  in  Minnesota,  who  said  to  me, 
"When  a  foreigner  comes  over  here,  we  want  to 
hear  the  nice  things.,,  Well,  anyone  who  reads 
these  chapters  will  find  as  many  nice  things  about 
America  as  is  good  for  her  self-conceit.  Only,  cases 
such  as  the  three  I  quote  make  one  a  little  nervous; 
one  is  afraid  to  generalize,  and  one  must  generalize 
when  one  is  writing  impressions  of  a  country.  I 
cannot  do  separate  justice  to  Mr.  Cristobal  of  El 
Paso,  and  Mr.  Hiram  Jebbison  of  Maine;  I  must 
find  out  in  general  the  things  that  Mr.  Cristobal 
and  Mr.  Jebbison  have  in  common.  I  hope  to  do 
this  in  a  later  chapter,  and  now  I  want  to  general- 
ize on  the  Middle  West. 

I  have  not  spent  a  lifetime  in  America,  but 
during  my  stay  I  have  done  nothing  but  study  her. 
I  have  observed  the  country  between  Maine  and 
Chicago;  Illinois  and  Oklahoma;  Missouri,  Ten- 
nessee, and  Pennsylvania;  I  have  visited  libraries, 
manufacturing  plants,  and  oil  wells;  I  have  talked 
to  a  number  of  people,  literary,  industrial,  com- 


4o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

mercial,  professional;  to  men,  mothers,  and  girls; 
to  Mayflower  Americans,  to  galvanized  Americans, 
to  negroes,  and  to  immigrants.  And  so  I  venture 
to  lay  down  my  narrow  definition  of  the  Middle 
West.  For  me  the  Middle  West  begins  west  of 
Pennsylvania.  I  feel  that  the  real  East  never  got 
very  far  away  from  the  coast,  that  the  West  came 
to  meet  the  people  who  sought  it;  it  came  fresh, 
free,  untraditional,  and  thus  very  swiftly  converted 
the  old  Englishmen  of  Colonial  days  into  Amer- 
icans. In  other  words,  to  me  the  Middle  West  is 
the  true  America.  The  gay  Orientalism  of  New 
York,  the  rigid  dignities  of  Boston,  the  laughter 
and  languors  of  the  South — to  me  these  things 
are  not  essentially  American.  The  true  America 
is  in  the  Middle  West,  and  Columbus  discovered 
nothing  at  all  except  another  Europe.  It  may  be, 
of  course,  that  the  Far  West  may  alter  my  im- 
pression, and  that  I  may  discover  by  the  Golden 
Gate  a  yet  more  convincing  America,  but  I  doubt 
it;  the  Far  West  is  still  to  too  great  an  extent  a 
pioneer  country,  just  as  the  East  is  to  too  great  an 
extent  a  traditional  country.  The  true  American 
spirit  appears  to  me  as  a  blend  of  traditionalism 
and  pioneering,  and  that  is  what  we  find  in  the 
Middle  West. 

In  eight  months,  in  Chicago,  three  thousand 
automobiles  were  stolen.    Such  a  fact  gives  one  an 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         41 

idea  of  the  magnitude  of  the  commercial  activities 
of  that  city.  I  do  not  mean  that  automobile  steal- 
ing has  yet  become  a  national  industry,  though 
it  is  going  strong,  but  if  automobiles  can  be  stolen 
at  the  rate  of  forty-five  hundred  per  annum,  many 
scores  of  thousands  must  be  making  Chicago  into 
the  city  of  noise  which  it  is.  My  first  impression 
of  Chicago  was  indeed  noise.  For  nothing  had  I 
seen  the  traffic  in  Piccadilly  Circus  and  on  Boule- 
vard Montmartre.  I  had  still  to  realize  the  impact 
upon  the  human  ear  of  two  lines  of  trolley  cars 
running  over  cobbles,  on  wheels  that  are  never 
oiled;  this,  combined  with  several  hundreds  of 
motor  vehicles  with  their  throttles  open;  this 
combined  with  a  double  line  of  elevated  railways 
whose  couplings  are  never  oiled;  and  this  com- 
bined with  a  policeman  who  acts  as  master  of  the 
revels  by  means  of  a  whistle.  What  a  whistle !  A 
steam  whistle?  A  steam  policeman?  In  Chicago 
you  never  can  tell.  It  was  magnificent.  I  had 
a  sense  that  here  was  something  animal  and  un- 
tamed, something  (as  Carl  Sandburg  might  put 
it)  sanguinary  and  husky.  Here  no  hint  of  leisure, 
nor  of  mercy,  for  mercy  is  a  draft  on  time  and  life — 
in  Chicago  there  is  no  time  for  life. 

This  immense  crowd  that  burrowed  among  the 
raging  traffic  wanted  to  get  somewhere;  it  wanted 
that  with  an  intensity,  with  a  singleness  of  object. 


42  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

which  I  did  not  discover  in  Fifth  Avenue.  As  I 
stood  dazed,  while  the  orange-sided  taxicabs  flitted 
past  me,  I  began  to  understand  the  Chicago  that 
says,  "I  want,"  and  at  the  same  time  says,  "I 
will."  The  policeman  with  his  whistle  at  once 
taught  me  something;  in  London  the  policeman 
puts  up  a  languid  hand  and  is  obeyed;  in  New  York 
he  puts  out  a  white-gloved  hand,  remarks,  "Go 
back,"  and  is  often  obeyed;  in  Chicago  he  needs  a 
whistle  as  a  word  of  command,  to  control  a  people 
who  will  not  obey.  Chicago  is  a  city  which  must 
be  dominated,  as  if  it  were  a  magnificent  and  savage 
animal  that  plunges  and  rears. 

It  is  not  for  nothing  that  the  predominating 
color  of  Chicago  is  orange.  It  is  as  if  the  city,  in 
its  taxicabs,  in  its  shop  fronts,  in  the  wrappings  of 
its  parcels,  chose  the  color  of  flame  that  goes  with 
the  smoky  black  of  its  factories.  It  is  not  for 
nothing  that  it  has  repelled  the  geometric  street 
arrangement  of  New  York  and  substituted  there- 
for great  ways  with  names  that  a  stranger  must 
learn  if  he  can.  As  a  rule  he  fails.  His  brain  does 
not  work  properly.  He  is  in  a  crowd  city,  and  if 
he  has  business  there,  he  tells  himself,  "If  I  weaken 
I  sha'n't  last  long." 

The  psychology  of  Chicago  is  deeply  colored 
with  self-love.  It  harbors  blinding  pride,  the 
pride  of  the  man  who  can  do  things,  and  has  no 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         43 

use  for  the  man  who  can't.  Almost  every  edu- 
cated person  in  Chicago  will  call  his  city  crude, 
perhaps  even  vulgar,  but  the  end  of  the  sentence 
exhibits  love  and  pride.  Pride  is  the  essence  of 
his  feeling;  the  inhabitant  of  Chicago  seems  to 
find  in  his  city  an  immense,  unruly  child,  something 
that  bellows,  breaks  windows,  says  unsuitable 
things  .  .  .  but  grows,  grows  magnificently,  se- 
cretly grows  in  dominating  charm,  in  the  charm  of 
eternal  adolescence,  the  charm  of  eternal  desire. 

This  psychology  is  not  that  of  all  the  Middle 
West.  In  St.  Louis,  for  instance,  another  civiliza- 
tion has  more  sobriety.  Here  is  a  big  city.  Here  is 
Lindell  Avenue,  with  its  detached  stucco  or  brick 
residences,  which  embody  the  respectability  of  the 
'sixties.  Here  is  the  new  architecture  of  West- 
minster Place  and  Portland  Place,  which  have  the 
modesty,  the  solidity  of  a  rich  English  suburb. 
Here  is  America  respectable  without  ostentation, 
and  here,  too,  lives  the  self-reliance  of  a  city  rich 
enough  to  afford  splendor,  to  afford  Forest  Park 
and  its  open-air  theater,  its  seventy-five  hundred 
seats,  its  stage  decorated  with  real  trees.  Here  is 
tradition,  about  the  feet  of  the  new  America  rising 
in  the  heart  of  St.  Louis;  round  the  American  cen- 
ter cling  hundreds  of  little  English  grocers,  fruit 
dealers,  and  mercers.  Here  is  little  Old  England 
drying  up,  while  in  the  middle  of  St.  Louis  the 


44  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

ambitious  office  buildings  rise  up  seeking  tlie  new 
horizon. 

St.  Louis  lost  something  of  its  old  direction  when 
its  breweries  lost  their  occupation.  This  applies 
also  to  Cincinnati,  where  again  I  had  the  impres- 
sion of  sobriety  and  comfort.  To  see  the  children 
of  St.  Louis  in  their  playground  is  to  understand 
another  side  of  the  Middle  West,  its  material  com- 
fort. There  were  two  hundred  of  them,  pupils  of 
a  free  school,  and  all  were  clean;  not  one  wore  dirty 
or  torn  clothes.  There  is  not  a  single  city  in 
England  where  you  could  visit  a  free  school  with 
such  a  result.  It  is  not  that  the  English  are  more 
careless  of  their  children  than  other  people:  it 
is  that  they  do  not  possess  the  material  wealth 
which  makes  the  Middle  West  so  splendid  an  ex- 
hibition. No  more  than  Europe  has  America  made 
full  use  of  her  opportunities;  the  haste  of  produc- 
tion produces  commercial  crises,  overstocking,  and 
therefore  poverty;  tenements  are  vile  and  nurture 
immorality.  But  America  has  wealth  in  hand, 
which  Europe  has  not;  only  work  is  wanted. 

Possibly  the  American  works  harder,  though  I 
have  never  found  that  hard  work  naturally  led  to 
high  rewards.  They  do  work  enormously  hard. 
For  instance,  in  Tulsa,  Oklahoma,  the  trolley  cars 
which  make  for  the  business  district  are  almost 
empty  at  8.30  a.m.     By  that  time  nearly  every- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         45 

body  is  at  work.  And,  at  Chicago,  I  was  interested 
by  a  big  business  building  opposite  my  hotel,  when 
I  noticed  that  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening  many 
of  the  offices  were  still  tenanted.  I  began  to 
watch  that  building.  At  nine  o'clock  work  was  go- 
ing on  in  thirty-eight  offices;  at  10.15  P-M-  there 
was  energy  still  in  ten;  at  11.35  P-M-  three  offices 
were  preparing  to  break  into  the  next  day.  I 
don't  know  what  happened  next,  for  I  went  to 
bed;  I  am  not  from  Chicago. 

In  Chicago  work  is  dramatic;  its  spirit  is  im- 
pressive; I  cannot  ignore  a  picture  postcard  I 
bought  there;  it  bears  merely  these  words,  "Ex- 
perience is  a  dead  loss  if  you  can't  sell  it  for 
more  than  it  cost  you."  A  variation  of  an  im- 
mortal truth  .  .  .  which  may  shock  some  gentle 
soul.  Well,  it  doesn't  shock  me.  I  like  the  ex- 
tremism of  it,  just  as  I  like  the  massive  place 
where  this  sentiment  circulates.  I  like  Chicago,  I 
like  the  colossal  lines  of  its  point  of  view,  its  re- 
ligion of  utility,  its  gospel  of  fitness,  just  as  I  like 
its  streets,  its  attempt  on  South  Michigan  Boule- 
vard to  force  even  the  lakeside  into  straight  lines. 
You  will  find  this  heavy  power  in  a  store  like 
Marshall  Field's,  a  commercial  city  within  a  com- 
mercial city,  a  place  so  vast  that  one  would  wel- 
come as  a  guide  through  its  labyrinth  a  thread 
woven  by  Arachne.    This  mystic  thread  of  the 


46  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

mythological  spider — does  Marshall  Field  stock  it  ? 
Probably. 

You  have  the  same  feeling  in  Washington  Park, 
in  the  vast  space  which  suggests  that  America 
always  has  plenty  of  land,  even  enough  for  its 
pleasure  grounds.  To  an  outsider  Chicago  seems 
too  big  for  mankind,  but  mankind  in  Chicago  does 
not  appear  worried  by  that  fact.  Indeed,  it  enjoys 
size;  it  likes  the  enormous  whiteness  of  the  monu- 
ment to  Time,  in  Washington  Park;  it  finds  its 
great  university  worthy  of  itself;  it  is  typical  of 
Chicago's  faith  in  its  own  future  that,  in  one  part 
of  that  university,  it  called  a  certain  space  a 
quadrangle  when  only  two  sides  of  it  were  built. 

The  Middle  West  can  afford  to  trust  a  future 
of  which  the  present  is  merely  the  vestibule.  I 
like  to  think  of  the  time  to  come  when  the  ledges 
between  the  Lakes  have  been  dredged  out  and 
when  the  fleets  of  the  world  will  come  sailing  up 
the  St.  Lawrence,  through  the  Lakes,  and  moor 
opposite  the  Congress  Hotel,  there  to  unload  the 
spices  of  India  and  the  caviar  of  the  Black  Sea. 
Mass  and  space;  that,  to  me,  defines  the  Middle 
West.  Consider  the  Continental  and  Commercial 
Security  Company's  Building.  It  is  a  bank  in 
Chicago,  and  conducts  its  activities  in  a  hall  that 
looks  like  a  railway  station.  The  building  exhibits 
all  the  splendid  dryness  of  line  of  American  archi- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         47 

tecture;  its  pillars  rise  up  contemptuous  to  an  ob- 
scure heaven.  Indeed,  the  Continental  and  Com- 
mercial Security  Company  is  housed  in  a  work 
of  art  made  more  estimable  by  being  also  a  work 
of  perfect  utility.  Or  again,  go  farther  south,  to 
little  Tulsa,  which  twenty  years  ago  did  not  exist, 
and  look  at  the  great  Cosden  Building.  England 
has  been  in  business  for  a  thousand  years  and  did 
not  think  of  a  building  higher  than  nine  floors; 
Tulsa  needed  it  before  it  was  twenty  years  old. 
There  is  no  precedent  for  this. 

But  these  altitudes  are  by  the  way,  though  they 
are  to  a  certain  extent  indications  of  spirit.  It 
is  in  the  manufacturing  plants  of  America  that 
human  vigor  expresses  itself  best.  I  have  seen  a 
number  of  them,  dealing  in  steel,  flour,  timber,  but 
in  a  way  Armour's  is  most  remarkable.  Armour's 
is  remarkable  not  so  much  because  it  has  divided 
the  operations  of  labor  as  far  as  human  ingenuity 
can  go,  but  because  of  the  material  on  which  it 
works.  To  watch  an  animal  from  the  pen  to  the 
tin  is  an  extraordinary  experience.  You  see  it 
killed;  it  falls;  a  conveyor  carries  it  away.  It  is 
flayed  while  you  wait.  It  disappears.  Then,  sud- 
denly, it  is  an  open  carcass;  it  passes  the  veteri- 
nary; in  a  few  seconds  it  is  cut  up,  and  hurriedly 
you  follow  the  dwindling  carcass  that  is  no  longer 
an  ox,  but  fragments  of  meat;   you  see  the  meat 


48  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

shredded;  in  another  room  the  manicured  girls  are 
filling  the  shreds  into  tins,  and  the  tin  is  closed  and 
labeled.  The  thing  that  astounds  is  the  quiet 
officialdom  of  this  murder.  It  is  as  if  nothing  had 
happened.  Death  is  so  swift,  the  evidence  of 
tragedy  so  soon  gone,  that  one  feels  no  shock  that 
flesh  loses  its  character.  Cattle  are  being  handled 
like  brass,  so  swiftly  that  life  becomes  merely  a  raw 
material.  That  is  Chicago.  A  superior  force, 
which  is  called  organized  industry,  has  cut  up  the 
cattle  on  a  traveling  belt  and  carried  them  away. 
For  a  moment  I  have  a  vision  of  Chicago  carried 
away  on  its  own  traveling  belt.  Carried  away 
.  .  .  where  to? 

I  did  not  have  so  strong  an  impression  of  the 
steel-rolling  mills,  no  doubt  because  I  know  some- 
thing about  metals  and  know  nothing  about  cattle. 
Rolling  mills  are  familiar  with  their  clank,  their 
dust,  and  all  that.  It  was  at  Minneapolis,  at  the 
Washburn-Crosby  Mills,  that  I  rediscovered  the 
magnificence  of  the  Middle  West.  Here  again  is  the 
immense  swiftness  of  modern  industry,  not  bloody 
this  time,  but  dainty.  The  flour  mills  are  like 
drawing-rooms,  lightly  powdered  as  befits.  For 
the  first  time  in  my  life  I  saw  a  factory  with  par- 
quet floors.  There  is  a  fascination  in  these  things, 
the  fascination  of  uniform  movement.  You  watch 
the  grain  from  the  elevator  on  to  the  belt,  then 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         49 

to  the  grinder,  to  the  shaking  sieves,  to  the  tests 
which  exhibit  purity,  to  the  hoppers  which  hu- 
manly discharge  just  as  much  as  the  sack  will  hold. 
The  sack  falls  into  a  truck,  and  it  is  gone.  There 
is  something  lovely  in  these  great  works;  they 
are  deserts,  void  of  men.  Nothing  is  handled  that 
can  possibly  be  seized  by  fingers  of  steel.  There  are 
solitude  and  activity;  there  is  nothing  there  save 
iron  and  lumber,  in  the  midst  of  which  sits  some 
secret,  invisible  soul.  Somehow  I  feel  that  in  these 
great  plants  I  see  before  me  the  future  of  the 
world,  a  world  where  the  machine  will  be  a  serv- 
ant shepherded  by  new  men  and  women,  in  rai- 
ment which  they  no  longer  need  to  soil,  and  who 
will  with  polished  finger  nails  touch  buttons  that 
convey  intelligent  messages. 

The  great  plants  of  the  Middle  West  seem  to  me 
to  sublimate  human  intelligence  and  to  promise  a 
time  when  mankind  will  be  free  from  sweat;  the 
curse  of  Adam  may  yet  be  lifted  by  Chicago.  In 
so  doing  the  Middle  West  is  doing  something  else; 
it  is  creating  beauty.  I  say  this,  realizing  the  con- 
tempt that  may  fall  upon  this  opinion  from 
academic  quarters.  There  is  beauty  elsewhere  than 
in  lace;  there  is  a  rugged  beauty,  and  there  is  a 
beauty  of  supreme  utility.  These  great  factories 
are  worthy  exponents  of  the  forgotten  William 
Morris;   there  everything  is  useful,  and  it  is  not 


So  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

excessive  to  say  that  everything  is  beautiful  be- 
cause everything  is  strong.  Naturally  the  strong 
are  not  also  the  subtle;  with  strength  goes  a  cer- 
tain crudity  of  expression  and  of  thought.  I  do 
not  refuse  to  see  the  almost  comic  contrast  between 
a  great  plant  and  the  mottoes  in  its  showroom. 
Here  are  two:  "Never  put  off  till  to-morrow  what 
you  can  do  to-day."  There  is  something  a  little 
obvious  in  that,  and  mischievous  Europeanism 
induces  me  to  retort,  "Never  do  to-day  what  you 
can  do  to-morrow;  you  may  never  have  to  do  it 
at  all."  Again,  there  is  vulgarity  in  this  other 
motto:  "Be  like  a  postage  stamp.  Stick  till  you 
get  there."  But  Talleyrand  was  right  in  saying 
that  you  cannot  make  omelets  without  breaking 
eggs.  The  Middle  West  cannot  be  expected  to 
prepare  the  omelet  of  the  future  without  making 
a  mess  of  the  eggs  of  the  skylark  and  the  dove. 
But  it  can  be  trusted  with  those  of  the  American 
eagle. 

The  Middle  West,  I  repeat  it,  is  doing  beauti- 
ful things.  It  has  even  produced  a  great  work  of 
art — the  grain  elevator.  Stop  for  a  moment  out- 
side the  mills  of  Pillsbury,  or  Washburn-Crosby, 
in  Minneapolis,  and  consider  the  lofty  towers  of 
these  elevators,  their  rounded  magnificence,  marred 
by  no  fanciful  nonsense  such  as  pediments  or  por- 
ticoes or  garlands,  or  suchlike  Renaissance  futility; 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         51 

consider  the  purity  of  the  lines  rising  sheer;  the 
elevator  is  like  a  turreted  castle,  spectral  white, 
and  as  free  from  excrescences  as  the  phrase  of  a 
great  prose  writer  from  useless  words.  The  towers 
cluster  under  their  cubic  tops,  dignified  and  serene. 
I  have  seen  the  cathedrals  of  America,  and  her 
grain  elevators.  I  have  seen  nothing  nobler  than 
these  factories  of  the  moon. 

A  material  component  in  the  psychology  of  the 
Middle  West  is  the  haste  and  intensity  with  which 
its  natural  wealth  is  being  developed.  One  obtains 
a  clear  idea  of  this  wealth  through  a  short  visit 
to  one  of  the  great  state  fairs,  such  as  the  one  which 
I  encountered  in  Minnesota.  These  fairs  fortify  the 
impression  derived  from  the  endless  wheat  and 
corn  fields  between  Minnesota  and  Kansas;  fields 
without  end:  that  sums  up  the  impression.  When 
one  talks  to  the  farmers,  slow,  cautious,  not  un- 
amiable,  though  faintly  suspicious,  one  under- 
stands the  speculation  in  real  estate  which  has 
swept  over  the  Middle  West;  one  hears  extraor- 
dinary stories  of  farms  of  five  or  six  hundred  acres, 
which  are  now  worth  one  hundred  dollars  an  acre; 
of  market  gardens  sold  for  a  thousand  dollars  an 
acre;  one  is  told  that  a  generation  ago  this  was 
wild  land  for  which  somebody  gladly  took  fifteen 
dollars.  One  hears  stories  of  sudden  wealth;  one 
visits  a  farmstead  and  discovers  with  a  certain  sense 


52  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

of  the  inappropriate  that  not  only  has  the  farmer 
an  automobile,  but  each  of  his  sons  has  one  too; 
there  is  a  grand  piano — but  also  a  gramophone. 
It  feels  sudden,  improvised,  and  all  the  more  so 
when  one  finds  out  how  careless  is  the  farming. 
Most  of  the  land  is  being  sweated,  the  crops  taken, 
and  nothing  put  back  by  an  adventurous  agri- 
culturist who  intends  to  push  on  farther  west  when 
he  has  looted  the  land.  I  encountered  no  crops 
comparing  with  the  European;  most  of  the  yields, 
particularly  of  wheat,  are  about  one  third  to  one 
half  of  a  French  crop.  And  the  land  is  better!  I 
am  not  crying  out,  "Waste!"  for  I  do  hot  know  all 
the  factors;  what  interests  me  is  the  reaction  on 
American  psychology.  This  wastefulness,  this  ex- 
cess, all  that  is  evidence  of  the  immense  bountiful- 
ness  of  the  land.  Men  farm  best  where  the  land  is 
cruel,  as  in  Scotland;  in  the  Middle  West  the 
land  is  beneficent,  and  so  it  is  no  wonder  that  a 
trait  of  Middle- West  psychology  should  be  good- 
tempered  hospitality  and  generosities  that  surprise 
the  European;  the  Middle  West  can  afford  virtues. 
It  was  an  unforgetable  impression,  an  impression 
of  a  Land  of  Cockayne,  that  I  obtained  at  the  Min- 
nesota State  Fair.  The  corncobs  were  so  large, 
so  smooth;  they  showed  fruit  fit  for  photography 
in  Christmas  supplements;  tomatoes  which  threat- 
ened the  pumpkin;  dark  grapes;  fish  and  game — 


THE    GRAIN    ELEVATORS    ARE    LIKE    TURRETED    CASTLES,    SPECTRAL   WHITE 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         53 

and,  what  counts  also,  by  the  side  of  the  leather, 
the  oil,  the  horses,  and  the  tools,  the  indications  of 
pioneer  culture,  the  posters  by  the  school  children, 
the  still  queerer  emotional  life,  represented  by  the 
societies  of  the  Irish  and  the  veterans.  There  was 
a  lot  of  everything — the  word  "  shortage  "  is  not 
American.  No  class  has  quite  so  much  as  it  wants, 
but  it  always  has  more  than  the  corresponding 
European  class.  That  is  why  you  can  visit  in 
America  a  city  of  a  hundred  thousand  inhabitants 
and  find  there  better  shops,  better  goods,  more 
artistic  stuffs,  more  attractive  furniture,  and,  in 
unexpected  spots,  a  more  vivid  culture  than  in 
any  English  town — wealth  leads  to  aristocracy; 
out  of  wealth  America  will  breed  hers.  The  poor 
aristocrat  is  a  popular  illusion.  Indeed,  an  aristo- 
crat may  be  poor,  but  he  must  be  the  son  or  the 
grandson  of  an  aristocrat  who  was  rich.  Without 
wealth  aristocracy  cannot  survive;  without  wealth 
it  cannot  be  born.  Wealth  does  not  necessarily 
create  aristocracy,  but  it  can  do  so.  I  feel  that 
the  aristocracy  of  America  will  not  be  maintained 
out  of  the  elegancies  of  Boston  or  the  languors  of 
South  Carolina,  but  is  being  born,  born  of  the 
rugged,  fierce  stock  of  the  Middle  West.  After  all, 
the  early  aristocrats,  the  Normans  and  the  Cru- 
saders, too,  were  kid-gloved  neither  in  their  morals, 
nor  in  their  manners. 


54  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

The  reader  will  realize  from  the  foregoing  that  I 
have  not  joined  the  faintly  envious  clamor  against 
the  Middle  West.  The  Middle  West,  by  the  fact 
of  its  novelty,  shows  its  "seamy  side";  the  dust 
of  ages,  which  has  filled  the  seams  of  Paris  and 
London  town,  has  not  had  time  to  make  for  the 
West  a  glossy  surface.  And  so  the  East,  with  three 
hundred  years  behind  it,  is  more  acutely  conscious 
of  Chicago  than  the  foreigner  can  be.  Certainly, 
from  the  Eastern  point  of  view,  Chicago  is  what 
you  might  call  difficult.  I  can  understand  that  a 
banking  family  in  Manhattan,  harking  back  to 
bankers  of  New  Amsterdam,  dislikes  the  un- 
ashamed boosting  which  Chicago  indulges  in.  Do 
not  attack  me  because  I  say  " boosting";  it  is 
Chicago's  own  word.  At  the  top  of  every  page 
of  one  of  the  Chicago  newspapers  you  will  find 
every  day  a  different  legend.  Here  are  two,  which 
I  extract,  collected  during  my  stay  in  Chicago: 
"Why  Chicago  is  great:  Chicago  has  more  than 
twenty  thousand  manufacturing  plants."  Here  is 
another:  "Be  a  Chicago  booster  to  your  friends  in 
other  cities."  Well,  yes,  it  is  a  little  difficult;  it 
crows  over  the  fallen;  there  is  nothing  delicate 
about  it.  But  Chicago  never  was  delicate;  no 
more  was  any  man  at  arms.  Chicago  is  the  man 
at  arms  of  modern  industry;  that  has  to  be  remem- 
bered when  you  criticize  it  at  work  or  at  leisure. 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         55 

It  has  a  passion  for  fact;  a  passion  for  realities 
malleable  as  cement  before  they  are  applied  to  in- 
dustry, hard  as  cement  in  the  end.  Chicago  is 
prouder  than  Boston,  because  it  is  surer  of  itself. 
It  has  built  its  castle  upon  the  future — for  Chicago 
a  secure  foundation.  That  is  why  there  is  no  peace 
in  Chicago,  and  why,  if  ever  Chicago  attains  peace, 
it  will  be  the  nefarious  peace  of  a  termination. 

Indeed,  the  whole  Middle  West  is  Chicagoan; 
it  is  conscious  of  itself,  more  conscious  than  any 
other  part  of  America.  Its  local  feeling  is  intense. 
That  baffles  one  sometimes,  when  one  discovers 
that  the  man  who  is  talking  to  you  is  not  talking 
about  America,  but  about  his  own  state.  I  had 
two  evidences  of  it,  in  each  case  owing  to  something 
having  been  said  against  the  people  or  the  manners 
of  a  certain  state;  in  each  case  denizens  of  the  state 
protested  violently,  but  when  it  came  to  attacking 
America  they  did  not  mind  much.  The  state 
meant  to  them  something  more  intimate,  some- 
thing more  precious  than.  America  itself. 

That  characteristic  has  been  observed  and 
laughed  at;  it  has  earned  for  America  a  provincial 
reputation,  which  seems  to  me  absurd,  when  we 
consider  that  the  American  spirit  arises  from  an  in- 
tellectual congress  of  all  the  world  spirits.  America 
is  not  provincial;  America  is  regional.  That  is 
natural  when  one  considers  that  its  size  is  so  great 


56  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

that  only  a  minority  of  Americans  can  afford  a 
journey  longer  than  twenty-four  hours,  and  that 
this  long  journey — long  enough  to  traverse  the 
whole  of  Great  Britain — will  not  take  a  man  be- 
yond the  borders  of  the  next  Middle-Western 
state.  It  is  natural  that  the  American  should  be 
insular,  for  every  state  is  an  island  cut  off  by  dis- 
tance. There  is  another  reason,  which  is  less  obvi- 
ous, and  that  is  the  political  arrangement  of 
America.  The  traveling  Englishman  tends  to  look 
upon  cities  such  as  Minneapolis  or  St.  Louis  as 
provincial  cities,  provincial  in  the  English  sense  of 
Manchester  or  Birmingham.  He  is  wrong.  He 
forgets  that  some  of  the  big  cities  are  capitals  of  an 
almost  sovereign  state;  in  many  cases  cities  no 
larger  than  Jefferson,  Nashville,  Albany,  have  their 
Capitols.  That  makes  a  difference.  Glasgow,  with 
its  eight  hundred  thousand  inhabitants,  is  nothing 
but  a  provincial  city.  It  sends  a  few  members  to  the 
British  Parliament,  and,  for  the  rest,  it  is  nothing. 
It  has  a  City  Council,  holds  powers  over  traffic 
and  sanitation,  etc.,  but  no  more.  Compare  that 
with  a  small  American  capital,  which  has  its  own 
parliament,  which  makes  its  own  absolute  laws  on 
civil  relations,  marriage,  inheritance,  etc.  Con- 
sider the  effect  upon  local  life,  notably  the  creation 
of  a  governing  class  in  the  state,  an  official  class, 
a  natural  center  for  education  and  culture.    From 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         57 

that  point  of  view  the  difference  is  enormous; 
Lancashire  is  merely  a  province,  but  Rhode  Island 
is  almost  a  sovereign  state.  Therefore,  a  man  from 
Rhode  Island  is  a  subject  of  Rhode  Island  as  much 
as  a  subject  of  America,  whereas  a  man  from  Lan- 
cashire is  a  British  subject,  carrying  a  vague 
geographical  label. 

To  me  this  is  a  good  thing.  I  believe  that  there 
are  in  the  world  only  two  perfect  constitutions: 
one  is  the  Swiss;  the  other  the  American.  How 
these  constitutions  work  out  is  another  question, 
but,  taken  by  themselves,  they  are  perfect,  because 
they  provide  a  maximum  of  home  rule  for  people 
living  under  different  climates,  therefore  people  of 
different  mentality,  and  especially  provide  almost 
complete  freedom  for  people  of  different  races.  It 
almost  looks  as  if  Alexander  Hamilton  and  his 
friends  had  foreseen  that  their  country  would  be- 
come the  melting  pot  of  the  world. 

If  it  were  not  for  state  liberty,  I  imagine  that 
America  would  have  experienced  much  greater  diffi- 
culties during  the  war,  when  it  had  to  deal  with 
hostile  German-Americans  and  with  almost  slug- 
gish Scandinavian  and  Czecho-Slovak  Americans. 
If  all  power  had  been  concentrated  at  Washington, 
I  wonder  if  the  problem  could  have  been  handled 
at  all.  As  it  was,  with  executive  powers  that  were 
accustomed  to  deal  exclusively  located  in  every 


58  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

state,  the  problem  was  minimized  by  being  divided. 
If  I  were  an  American,  I  should  be  one  of  those 
who  jealously  resist  any  extension  of  power  to  the 
Federal  authorities;  I  should  stand  for  my  state 
first,  because  I  should  believe  that  the  people  of 
my  own  state  were  closer  to  me  in  temperament 
than  citizens  of  the  same  country  living  three  thou- 
sand miles  away. 

The  state  system  seems  to  be  manifestly  ideal, 
as  I  observe  the  German-American.  Let  my  read- 
ers overlook  the  hyphen.  It  is  no  use  pretending 
that  all  are  ioo-per-cent  Americans.  Some  are, 
and  some  are  not.  What  matters  is  that  the  per- 
centage, if  it  is  less  than  ioo  per  cent,  should  be 
a  good,  healthy  percentage  likely  to  grow  as  the 
generations  pile  up. 

I  encountered  a  good  many  German-Americans 
in  Milwaukee,  Wisconsin,  and  farther  south.  They 
were  not  crushed  or  uncomfortable;  several  of 
them  spoke  German  among  themselves,  but  in 
most  cases  I  felt  that  they  were  Americans  first, 
and  German  only  in  their  memory.  One  of  them, 
who  arrived  in  America  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  and 
who  had  married  an  American-born  wife,  expressed 
to  me  his  deliberate  intention  of  "becoming"  a 
ioo-per-cent  American;  another,  who  had  arrived 
at  the  age  of  eight,  was  almost  completely  Amer- 
icanized— remembered  only  a  few  German  words 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         59 

that  his  mother  had  spoken.  A  third,  who  immi- 
grated at  a  later  age,  was  a  little  sad;  he  could 
not  help  feeling  the  disaster  which  had  come  upon 
his  country,  and  put  his  situation  simply:  "What's 
the  use  of  thinking  of  the  things  that  happened  in 
the  past  ?  The  only  thing  is  to  settle  down  in  this 
country,  which  is  good  to  us,  and  do  the  best  we 
can  for  ourselves. "  Then,  with  a  flash  of  insight, 
"To  do  the  best  for  ourselves  in  America,  it  seems 
to  me  that's  the  best  thing  we  can  do  for  America 
itself."  In  other  words,  the  American  magnet 
seems  to  draw  the  national  traits  out  without 
shaming  them.  For  instance,  in  St.  Paul,  a  large 
board  in  a  building  plot  announces  that  an  edi- 
fice will  shortly  become  "the  future  home  of  the 
German-American  industries."  In  the  same  town 
there  is  still  a  Folks  Zeitung.  In  other  words,  the 
German-American  is  holding  his  head  up,  which 
means  that  nobody  is  beating  it  down.  That  seems 
to  be  the  right  way. 

It  is  part  of  the  vitality  of  the  Middle  West 
that  it  should  put  as  much  energy  into  its  pleasures 
as  it  does  into  its  work.  That  is  perhaps  American, 
rather  than  Middle- Western,  for,  in  general,  the 
American  seems  to  work  sixteen  hours  a  day.  He 
may  call  one  occupation  hustling  freight,  another 
one  eating,  another  golf,  but  it  is  all  work.  And 
whether  this  is  a  vice  or  a  virtue  may  be  discussed 


6o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

later  on.  But  in  the  Middle  West  there  is  a  curious 
intensity  of  organization.  Almost  every  town  has 
a  guidebook,  indicating  pleasures.  I  have  a  col- 
lection of  them,  such  as,  Now  in  St.  Louis,  The 
Visitor  s  Handy  Guide  to  Minneapolis,  Seeing  Chi- 
cago, What  Is  Doing  in  Cincinnati,  In  Kansas  City 
This  Week,  etc.  You  will  never  find  that  in  Europe, 
except  in  the  capital.  In  minor  European  towns 
the  favorite  diversion  is  sleep;  I  believe  the  average 
American  would  prefer  nightmare.  He  is  always 
doing,  always  planning;  he  follows  Mr.  Arnold 
Bennett  and  learns  to  live  on  twenty-four  hours  a 
day.  When  he  takes  his  pleasure  in  a  cultural 
form  he  is  sometimes  rather  grave;  in  fact,  there 
is  a  certain  gravity  in  all  American  pleasures, 
though  noisy,  because  they  are  taken  intensely 
and  thoroughly.  If  the  American  acted  otherwise 
he  would  feel  that  he  was  wasting  the  good  raw 
material  of  life.  So  the  American  pleasure  crowds 
are  more  vivid  than  those  of  Europe;  they  are 
not  so  light,  they  are  perhaps  not  so  spontaneous, 
but  anybody  who  has  sat  at  the  movies,  or  watched 
"Babe"  Ruth  excite  his  crowd,  realizes  the  depth 
of  feeling  that  the  American  puts  into  moments 
ferociously  snatched  from  his  daily  work. 

Naturally,  in  the  Middle  West  with  this  goes 
what  the  East  calls  crudity.  The  West  is  plain- 
spoken,  and  does  not  waste  anything  of  its  appeal. 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         61 

It  realizes  that  pleasure  is  one  of  the  national 
products,  just  as  it  tells  one  that  the  film  industry 
is  the  fourth  in  order  of  importance.  So  it  puts 
things  briefly.  It  advertises  on  a  boarding  that  to- 
night there  will  be  a  "vodvil,"  which  is  a  way  of 
expressing  eagerness  and  economy  of  effort  foreign 
to  the  more  languid  tradition  of  " vaudeville."  I 
had  the  same  impression  in  St.  Paul,  where,  out- 
side a  restaurant,  stands  merely  in  enormous  let- 
ters the  word,  "Eat."  It  is  unvarnished;  it  says 
to  you :  "  Do  you  want  a  good  time  ?  Come  inside," 
instead  of  saying,  more  or  less,  "Within  will  be 
found  diversions  for  the  families  of  gentlefolk." 
I  saw  the  Middle  West  at  play  in  Barnum's  circus 
as  it  went  through  Kansas  City.  Kansas  City 
was  perhaps  not  the  best  place  to  see  intensity, 
for  to  me  it  is  a  Southern  town.  It  is  a  joyful,  de- 
lightful town,  with  its  patchwork  of  black  and 
white  faces,  its  bright  colors,  its  lovely  sunshine, 
and  its  sense  of  prosperity. 

I  found  out  that  the  circus  was  coming  because 
the  streets  filled  up.  The  sidewalks  were  lined 
with  rows  of  colored  women  and  solemn  pickanin- 
nies. A  little  farther  were  the  whites,  who  pre- 
tended not  to  be  interested,  but  stood  about  all 
the  same,  talking  hard  and  forbearing  from  going 
to  their  business.  Just  behind  me  a  shine  shop, 
conducted  by  seven  negroes,  added  the  sounds  of 


62  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

a  gramophone  to  their  labors;  from  time  to  time, 
at  the  proper  moment  of  syncopation,  the  shiners 
all  together  brought  down  their  brushes  upon  a 
board!  It  felt  very  "South,"  but  it  was  Middle 
West  all  the  same.  There  was  no  mistake  about 
that  when  you  reached  the  main  street.  Kansas 
City,  that  day,  was  in  the  hands  of  its  circus.  It 
stayed  in  its  hands  all  the  week,  though  one  would 
have  thought  that  the  vast  tent,  which  seats  seven 
or  eight  thousand  people  round  the  eight  standards 
laden  with  electric  lights,  could  have  taken  in, 
in  one  night,  the  idlers  of  the  town.  The  point  is 
that  the  circus  did  not  appeal  to  the  idlers,  but  to 
the  whole  of  Kansas  City,  to  the  whole  population, 
determined  to  take  all  the  pleasure  it  could.  I 
never  saw  a  more  responsive  audience,  piled  forty 
feet  high.  In  the  amphitheater  of  the  tent  there 
was  a  constant  swirl  of  excitement,  a  craning  to  the 
right  and  left,  as  if  to  miss  nothing  of  what  was 
going  on  in  the  three  rings.  Barnum's  could  not  be 
anything  but  American;  it  is  too  large.  Europe 
has  never  sent  twenty  clowns  together,  or  three 
motor-car  loads  of  comics  on  any  stage;  nor  would 
we  think  of  showing  together  dancing  elephants, 
jujitsu,  and  a  tree-chopping  competition.  The 
effect  bewilders — the  excessive  lighting,  the  exces- 
sive variety.  It  is  a  savage  entertainment,  a  shower 
of  pleasures  before  some  barbarian  conqueror. 


THE    APPEAL    OF   THE    CIRCUS    IS    PERENNIAL    THROUGHOUT   THE    LAND 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         63 

In  the  grounds  they  sold  bright  balloons,  pink 
orelectric  blue.  As  we  came  back  upon  the  trolley 
car  it  was  almost  full  of  colored  people.  A  young 
negress  in  strawberry  pink  was  laughing  as  she 
enticed  aloft  one  of  those  light  balloons.  She  had 
fine  Parisian  features,  twinkling  black  eyes.  As 
the  balloon  descended  too  suddenly  upon  a  sharp 
finger  nail,  it  burst,  and  she  vanished,  weeping, 
among  the  consolations  of  two  enormous  mam- 
mies, one  in  yellow  satin  with  a  blue  sunbonnet. 

I  do  not  quite  know  what  I  mean,  but  I  feel  that 
the  pleasure  of  the  circus  expresses  something  im- 
portant in  the  Middle  West.  The  circus  is  most 
successful  from  Ohio  westward,  and  south  of  the 
Mason  and  Dixon  line.  It  makes  an  elementary 
contrast  with  the  more  sophisticated  rhythms  of 
Broadway.  It  expresses  difficulty,  natural  strength, 
skill,  and  it  gives  through  acrobats  its  thrills  of 
terror.  The  Minnesota  State  Fair,  for  instance, 
offered  as  a  sensation  a  crash  between  two  loco- 
motives launched  upon  a  track;  another  was  an 
aeronautical  feat — the  passage  of  the  aviator  from 
one  plane  to  the  other,  both  being  in  motion.  It 
means  something,  all  that;  it  conveys  something 
fierce  in  Middle-Western  psychology,  something 
rooted  deep  in  the  spirit  of  the  pioneer.  The  man 
who  has  taken  risks  values  other  men  only  if  they 
take  risks.  He  likes  danger  for  its  own  sake,  though 


64  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

he  is  afraid,  like  other  men,  when  he  meets  it.  It 
stimulates  him  physically;  he  is  not  content  with 
the  languid  songs  and  the  rosy  lights  of  the  more 
ancient  civilizations. 

It  is  an  apparent  paradox  that  the  effort  of  the 
Middle  West  should  be  as  cultural  as  it  is  sensa- 
tional. I  feel  that  in  Middle- Western  psychology 
you  will  find  almost  equal  interest  in,  let  us  say,  a 
fight  between  a  lion  and  a  bull,  and  the  latest  play 
by  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw.  That  is  not  such  a  paradox 
as  it  seems.  If  we  find,  as  I  did  in  St.  Paul,  a  book- 
shop where  three  complete  shelves  are  devoted  to 
the  works  of  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad,  in  Chicago,  an 
appreciation  of  good  literature  that  has  developed 
bookshops  such  as  one  can  hardly  find  abroad;  if 
you  find  universities  rising  upon  the  prairie  and 
within 'two  or  three  years  collecting  five  thousand 
students,  who  arrive  there  straight  with  the  straw 
in  their  hair;  if  you  find  in  young  cities  like  Min- 
neapolis a  splendid  university;  in  little  Tulsa, 
that  is  not  twenty  years  old,  a  high  school  made 
of  white  stone — it  merely  means  that  here  again 
are  the  characteristics  of  Middle-Western  desire. 

The  Middle  West  wants  things,  everything, 
everything  that  man  can  get,  whether  it  is  gold, 
or  love,  or  knowledge;  it  wants  even  aestheticism. 
In  the  office  of  an  editor,  a  little  while  ago,  I  met 
a  woman  whom  I  will  call  a  missionary  of  the 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         65 

Middle  West.  She  was  one  of  those  elderly  women, 
full  of  fire  and  conviction,  whose  emotions  have 
flowed  into  a  single  channel.  With  a  volubility 
that  sometimes  was  bitter  and  sometimes  in- 
flamed, she  was  going  the  round  of  all  the  news- 
papers in  America  to  induce  them  to  give  space 
every  day  to  facts  about  pictures  and  sculpture. 
She  was  being  rather  cynically  received  that  day 
by  a  very  charming  editor,  who  had  been  in  journal- 
ism for  a  long  time  and  kept  few  illusions.  His 
indifference  excited  her;  the  glow  in  her  eyes  grew 
as  she  explained  that  the  women  of  the  Middle 
West  were  aching  for  contact  with  pictures.  She 
was  told  that  not  one  out  of  ten  thousand  educated 
people  cared  for  pictures.  She  replied  that  the 
love  of  pictures  came  from  the  emotions,  and  that 
education  was  not  the  ground  where  emotions 
flourished.  When  laughed  at,  she  replied,  with  im- 
movable faith,  that  we  did  not  know  her  women, 
that  we  had  not  seen  them,  after  a  long  day's 
work,  go  to  a  loan  exhibition.  She  even  told  us 
that  one  of  the  old  ladies  came  to  her  with  tears  in 
her  eyes,  after  looking  at  a  Turner;  the  moral 
strain,  which  is  so  strong  in  Americans,  made  her 
suggest  that  to  push  forward  pictures  was  the 
right  thing  to  do.  She  was  wholly  vital  and  full 
of  faith.  Now  faith  to  a  European  is  always  a  little 
funny.    We  cannot  help  it,  yet  I  was  moved  by  the 


66  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

hopefulness,  the  sincerity  of  all  this,  believing,  as 
I  do,  that  it  does  not  matter  much  what  one  puts 
faith  in,  if  one  manages  to  have  any  faith  at  all. 
It  seemed  to  me  so  indicative  of  the  Middle  West. 
I  realize  that  much  of  the  admiration  which  pic- 
tures obtain  is  mechanical;  that  it  arises  from  a 
dull  desire  to  improve  one's  mind,  which  is  an 
awful  idea.  But  still  it  is  desire,  it  is  hope,  it  is  an 
aspiration  to  make  an  atmosphere  where  taste  will 
have  its  chance,  a  chance  which  it  may  not  secure 
in  a  more  cynical  and  faded  land. 

The  Middle  West  respects  the  arts.  In  Europe 
the  arts  are  the  scullions  of  the  idle  and  the  rich. 
In  the  Middle  West  they  seem  to  be  ignored  by  a 
great  many  busy  people,  but  they  do  somehow 
earn  their  respect.  There  are  large  circles  which 
specialize  in  the  arts,  whose  appreciation  sometimes 
takes  unexpected  forms.  For  instance,  at  a  large 
tea  party  in  Chicago,  some  fragments  from  a  novel 
of  mine  were  read  aloud.  It  was  very  embarrass- 
ing. It  was  something  that  could  never  have 
happened  in  Europe.  Europeans  would  have  felt 
as  self-conscious  about  it  as  I.  But  when  I  re- 
covered from  my  embarrassment  I  understood  that 
here  was  honest  appreciation;  here  was  a  real  lik- 
ing for  the  words  that  were  being  read.  It  is  this 
genuineness  that  in  the  Middle  West  appeals  to 
one  all  the  time.    In  places  culture  attains  singii- 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         67 

larity.  There  is  in  Chicago  a  curious,  decadent 
little  club,  with  orange  couches,  gray-green  walls, 
and  orange  curtains  decorated  with  black  lace;  the 
yellow  walls  are  flowered  in  black.  Here  are  crystal 
and  dancing  and  an  aspiration  to  Paris  or  Vienna. 
That  is  a  new  Middle  West,  no  longer  the  Middle 
West  of  the  lecture  club,  but  a  Middle  West  which 
has  digested  its  conquests  and  is  developing  into 
sophistication. 

On  the  whole,  though,  the  Middle  West  remains 
itself,  almost  untouched.  You  will  find  its  solidity 
in  its  bookshops,  where  appear  Mr.  Chesterton, 
Miss  Clemence  Dane,  Mr.  Galsworthy,  Mr.  Con- 
rad, Mr.  Beresford,  etc.,  and  many  works  on  demo- 
cratic and  sociological  questions.  Almost  every- 
where, too,  "liberal"  bookshops,  which  seem  to 
specialize  in  radical  pamphlets  and  in  Russian  lit- 
erature. Nothing  of  that  can  be  ignored.  It  is 
all  part  of  the  great  rush  of  desire  which  is  the 
central  fact  of  the  Middle  West.  It  is  the  desire 
of  the  pioneer  who  has  just  made  his  money.  Not 
many  years  ago  he  used  to  come  up  to  the  cities 
for  a  magnificent  spree  in  the  saloons.  Now  his 
wife  has  taught  him  other  lessons  and  he  is  coming 
up  to  the  cities  to  have  a  great  spree  on  modern 
civilization. 

I  suspect  that  the  only  way  in  which  one  can 
obtain  a  truthful  picture  of  Middle- Western  psy- 


68  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

chology  is  by  realizing  that  the  Middle  West  is 
still  a  pioneer  country.  In  a  sense,  most  of  America 
is  still  pioneering.  It  has  only  touched  the  edge 
of  its  natural  resources;  the  individual  chances 
are  still  immense,  and  that  is  perhaps  why  social- 
ism has  made  in  America  less  progress  than  it  has 
in  Europe.  I  have  been  told  that  in  America  a 
man  of  forty  has  either  made  his  way  or  will  never 
make  it  at  all.  I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  at  forty 
he  must  be  a  millionaire,  but  at  forty  he  must 
have  achieved  his  position  as  director  of  a  corpora- 
tion, maker  of  chairs,  or  artisan,  according  to  his 
capacities.  At  forty  he  has  either  failed  or  suc- 
ceeded; as  he  grows  older  he  will  not  find  himself 
more  respected,  as  he  would  in  Europe.  Therefore, 
he  knows  that  the  individual  struggle  is  hot;  he 
struggles,  and  has  little  time  for  socialistic  ideas. 
Moreover,  he  is  born  to  a  birthright  that  no  western 
European  enjoys.  An  English  boy  of  seventeen 
knows  pretty  well  what  the  future  can  give  him. 
If  he  is  born  in  the  gentleman  class  and  has  money, 
he  knows  that  he  can  be  Prime  Minister;  if  in  the 
gentleman  class  but  without  money,  he  knows 
that  he  can  hope  to  make  ten  to  twenty  thousand 
dollars  a  year  in  one  of  the  professions,  and  perhaps 
in  business;  but  if  he  is  a  poor  boy  who  has  gone 
to  the  national  school  he  knows  perfectly  well  that, 
barring  extraordinary  accidents,  he  will  always  be 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         69 

a  small  man,  an  employed  man,  a  minor  shop- 
keeper, etc.  That  is  not  the  situation  in  America. 
Every  boy  knows  that  nothing  need  stop  him, 
that  no  class  bar  will  cut  him  off  from  any  posi- 
tion or  any  office.  In  politics,  notably,  he  knows 
that  he  has  not  to  fear  the  rivalry  of  the  old 
American  families,  because  they  stand  aloof  from 
politics;  lastly,  he  knows  that  in  the  West  of  his 
country  lies  land  which  has  seldom  been  trodden 
by  a  white  foot.  Therefore,  there  are  resources 
which  he  can  take,  and,  being  a  normal  human 
being,  he  tries  to  secure  his  share.  In  other  words, 
he  is  born  a  pioneer.  I  do  not  want  to  exaggerate; 
many  millions  of  Americans  are  perfectly  content 
to  go  on  indefinitely  in  the  occupation  they  have 
drifted  into,  and  seek  only  more  wages  or  more 
salary,  but  the  thing  that  matters  is  the  conscious- 
ness in  the  American  mind  that  everything  is  open 
and  everything  is  possible. 

The  Americans  are  called  an  ambitious  race; 
that  is  not  wonderful,  for  their  country  contains 
food  for  ambition.  You  have  this  feeling  if  you 
visit  a  real  pioneer  town.  Such  a  thing  cannot 
be  found  at  all  in  Europe,  while  in  America  it 
is  still  fairly  common.  I  experienced  that  feeling 
when  I  spent  several  days  in  Tulsa,  Oklahoma, 
a  town  of  seventy-two  thousand  inhabitants,  and 
which  twenty  years  ago  did  not  exist  at  all.     It 


7o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

has  arisen  on  the  oil  fields;  the  district  is  still 
so  deeply  in  the  pioneer  stage  that  four  years  ago, 
a  few  miles  away,  at  a  place  called  Slick,  there 
was  a  big  saloon  where  the  cash  desk  was  per- 
manently guarded  by  a  man  with  a  loaded  rifle. 
Now,  what  is  interesting  in  Tulsa  is  the  remnant 
of  the  pioneering  spirit  as  it  recedes  before  the 
bank  and  the  trolley  car.  Both  spirits  still  dwell 
there.  Already  long  business  streets  and  tall  office 
buildings  have  arisen  everywhere.  But  they  can- 
not rise  fast  enough;  that  is  the  essence  of  Tulsa. 
For  instance,  the  president  of  the  Exchange  Na- 
tional Bank,  which  is  located  in  a  building  of  fifteen 
floors,  told  me  that  they  had  reserved  for  the  bank 
a  certain  space;  the  bank  outgrew  the  space  in  six 
months.  But  a  hundred  yards  away  from  the  big 
bank,  the  modern  hotel  with  its  luxurious  lounge 
and  its  French  restaurant,  next  door  to  the  rail- 
way station,  lies  a  green  field,  where  at  night  the 
locusts  sing  in  thousands.  Civilization  jostles  the 
wild!  It  jostles  it  in  the  most  extraordinary  way. 
For  in  this  young  city  there  is  an  active  social  life, 
much  dining  and  dancing;  smart  little  cafes,  danc- 
ing clubs,  and  musical  societies  have  formed;  the 
newspapers  already  have  their  traditions;  at  night 
the  electric  light  blazes  in  the  city,  to  the  amaze- 
ment of  the  Osage  Indians,  who  sit  in  their  blan- 
kets upon  the  hills  that  overlook  the  town. 


WEALTH    GUSHES    FROM    THE    GROUND    IN    TORRENTS 


AMERICA  IN  THE  MAKING         71 

Tulsa  has  just  happened.  A  visit  to  Owens  Park, 
for  instance,  is  a  revelation  of  speed;  it  is  so  new, 
its  trees  are  so  young,  that  at  ten  o'clock  in  the 
morning  it  is  impossible  to  find  in  it  a  satisfactory- 
square  yard  of  shade.  Here  is  the  country  of  the 
new  men,  the  oil  men.  I  have  watched  them  for 
a  long  time,  nearly  all  of  them  rather  dry,  tall 
Yankees,  or  of  the  new  American  type,  dark  and 
rather  heavy.  All  look  hard;  all  live  on  oil;  I 
have  a  vague  feeling  that  in  Oklahoma  the  limita- 
tions of  morals  and  of  law  are  the  limitations  set 
by  the  police,  and  occasionally  by  lynch  law.  Here 
is  the  new  edition  of  Brandy  Gulch.  The  men 
outnumber  the  women,  some  of  whom  belong  to  a 
rather  hectic  type.  But  already  the  mothers  and 
the  young  ladies  range  the  town;  civilization  is 
swift  upon  the  pioneers'  trail. 

Tulsa  is  still  a  mining  camp;  it  expresses  itself  in 
violent  films,  just  as  a  few  years  ago  it  expressed 
itself  in  its  saloons.  It  still  has  a  vast  population 
housed  in  shacks,  but  a  population  that  presses  a 
button  when  it  wants  a  glass  of  water  or  a  team 
of  elephants.  All  rests  on  oil,  and  I  had  the  good 
fortune  to  be  present  at  a  well  when  oil  was  struck, 
when  the  mother  sand  came  up,  black,  and  smell- 
ing of  the  precious  fluid.  They  are  unimpressive, 
these  oil  derricks;  the  oil  plant  seems  knocked 
together,  improvised  out  of  waste  lumber  and  old 


72  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

pipes.  The  sense  of  pioneering  is  enhanced  by  so 
much  being  made  out  of  so  little,  made  also  with 
little  apparent  excitement.  The  truth  is  that  there 
is  not  very  much  excitement  in  pioneering.  It  is 
the  normal  job  of  the  Middle- Westerner;  adven- 
ture is  his  business;  none  see  romance  in  the  long, 
long  trail  when  they  come  to  set  their  foot  upon  it. 
It  is  part  of  the  Middle- Western  psychology  that 
in  the  Tulsa  World  I  should  have  found  two  col- 
umns of  situations  vacant  and  only  half  a  column 
of  people  wanting  situations.  In  spite  of  the 
Chicago  slums,  there  is  enough  for  everybody; 
that  is  the  chief  lesson  of  the  Middle  West.  There 
is  enough  for  every  ambition,  whether  material  or 
cultural;  what  the  Middle  West  makes  of  its 
chances  will  inevitably,  in  virtue  of  its  size,  in  virtue 
of  its  dominating  novelty,  be  a  simple  thing;  the 
civilization  that  the  Middle  West  creates  within 
the  next  fifty  years  will  be  the  American  civilization. 


Ill 

THE  AMERICAN  SCENE 

IT  is  not  superfluous  to  repeat,  before  preparing 
an  outline  of  the  American  character,  that  a 
lifetime  would  not  be  too  much  for  such  a 
task,  covering  so  many  regions,  such  various 
races,  temperaments,  with  three  centuries  of  tra- 
dition, and  new  Americans  whose  fathers  were 
Poles.  So  what  I  wish  to  say  is  in  the  nature  of 
impression  rather  than  conclusion,  and  I  am  pre- 
pared to  be  corrected  by  my  own  experience.  But 
I  do  feel  entitled  to  call  the  United  States  "God's 
own  country."  It  is  true  that  (according  to  the 
American  Bankers'  Association)  30  per  cent  of 
Americans  aged  fifty-five  depend  on  their  children 
or  charity;  that  at  the  age  of  sixty-five  no  less 
than  54  per  cent  are  thus  unfortunate;  it  is  true 
that  the  ravages  of  tuberculosis,  the  enormous 
divorce  rate,  compare  with  the  schedule  of  Euro- 
pean miseries.  Still,  here  is  a  favored  land  which, 
owing  to  its  area  and  to  its  wealth,  can  give  a 
chance  to  every  young  man,  and,  if  it  chooses, 
even  to  every  young  woman.     All  benefits  have 


74  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

been  poured  out  upon  America  and  America  is 
using  them  as  a  cheerful  prodigal;  America  is  con- 
scious of  her  good  fortune,  and  that  is  why  she  can 
afford  the  manifestation  of  pride  which  is  called 
democracy.  Democracy  is  the  most  arrogant  of 
all  forms;  it  is  the  converse  of  snobbery,  for  the 
snob  conceives  only  superiors  and  inferiors.  The 
snob  is  a  man  who  thinks  he  has  no  equals,  while 
the  democrat  is  the  man  who  thinks  he  has  only 
equals.    He  is  often  mistaken  in  his  view. 

And  so  a  European  thinks  it  picturesque  and 
delightful  to  go  to  a  bathing  hut  on  a  lake,  ask 
for  his  bathing  things,  and  hear  a  youth  call  out  to 
his  boss,  "Say,  where's  this  mans  bathing  suit?" 
To  have  a  colored  chambermaid  stop  him  on  the 
stairs  and  bluntly  ask,  "Where's  your  wife?"  It  is 
amusing,  after  the  bent  backs  of  the  English  serv- 
ant class,  though  I  should  add  that  these  backs 
are  bending  less  and  less  now.  It  is  pleasing  be- 
cause, like  most  things  American,  the  democratic 
notion  is  cut  out  in  sharp  lines  and  painted  in 
bright  colors.  The  American  fantasia,  if  I  may  so 
call  it,  is  scarlet  and  gold.  The  scarlet  of  American 
excess  creeps  even  into  the  pale  blue  of  American 
sentimentality.  Let  not  the  reader  conclude  that 
I  claim  for  England  freedom  from  sentimentality; 
we,  too,  suffer  greatly  from  what  I  may  call  emo- 
tion  gone    moldy.      But    England   feels   a   little 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  75 

ashamed  of  her  sentimentality,  while  America 
tends  to  account  it  as  righteousness.  The  senti- 
mental attitude  toward  women,  noblest  and  purest, 
I  will  say  something  of  a  little  farther  on.  It  some- 
times takes  a  strange  lyrical  form,  particularly  in 
the  newspapers.  And  the  newspapers  matter,  for 
the  newspaper  exhibition  of  the  national  character 
is  the  national  character  seen  under  a  magnifying 
glass.  The  newspaper  character  is  the  national 
character — more  so.  For  instance,  I  read  in  a  news- 
paper that  a  certain  lady  has  extraordinary  cour- 
age, a  keen  sense  of  intuition,  and  a  sublime  faith 
in  God.  A  very  sagacious  diagnosis  inside  a  single 
interview. 

But  sentimentality,  which  so  naturally  envelops 
the  young  bride,  the  good  mother,  the  little  child, 
takes  in  America  some  forms  that  interest  me  more. 
One  of  them  is  the  sweet  and  simple  life  of  million- 
aires. I  am  continually  reading  descriptions  show- 
ing that  the  financial  superman  does  not  live  on 
caviar  off  diamond-studded  plates;  that  his  subtle 
mind  subsists  upon  the  rudest  fare  and  the  highest 
thought;  that  he  likes  to  set  aside  the  nurture  of 
his  millions  for  a  peaceful  hour  with  Artemus 
Ward;  that  his  true  pleasure  is  serving  in  the  local 
creche,  teaching  the  creed  that  is  called,  "How  to 
get  on  and  yet  be  good."  I  like  to  think  of  the 
millionaire  talking  freely  in  the  street  to  some  one 


76  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

who  owns  rather  less,  and  with  a  green  watering- 
can  assisting  into  beauty  a  little  bed  of  marigolds. 

I  think  that  impulse,  which  is  purely  American, 
arises  from  a  desire  to  humanize  the  apparently 
inhuman.  American  business,  shrewd  as  it  is, 
seems  to  have  a  heart;  it  wants  to  do  for  in- 
dividual men  the  fair  and  the  generous  thing. 
The  whole  trend  of  American  civilization  is  to- 
ward stressing  the  human  factor;  indeed,  the 
word  "human"  (in  the  sense  of  "friendly")  is  used 
in  no  other  part  of  the  English-speaking  coun- 
tries. Also,  a  certain  reverence  attaches  to  power; 
reverence  is  always  apparent  in  the  American  char- 
acter, curiously  combined  with  irreverence.  For 
instance,  the  magazine  and  novel  continually  pre- 
sent allusions  to  "the  great  surgeon"  and  "the 
great  lawyer."  The  cynical  European  suspects  that 
the  great  surgeon  is  a  scrubby  reactionary  who  does 
not  read  the  medical  journals;  he  views  the  great 
lawyer  either  as  a  foxy  fee  snatcher  or  as  a  tooth- 
less dodderer  on  the  bench.  But  the  American 
seems  to  invest  these  people  with  mental  robes  of 
ermine  and  scarlet.  He  is  more  easily  impressed; 
his  vision  is  more  direct  and  less  often  leads  him 
to  doubt;  where  a  European  would  doubt,  an 
American  often  hates. 

You  find  this  seriousness  extending  even  to  the 
most  ignoble  of  occupations,  the  arts.    In  civilized 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  77 

countries  the  arts  are,  as  a  rule,  merely  the  re- 
sounding kettles  tied  to  the  tails  of  the  hounds 
that  are  hunting  the  great  quarry  of  profit.  But 
in  an  American  newspaper  you  will  see  headlines 
such  as  this,  "  Playwright  Finds  His  Inspiration  in 
Lonely  Sand  Dunes."  No  European  would  be  in- 
terested in  the  playwright's  inspiration,  except  as 
an  object  for  jeers.  The  American  takes  the  arts 
seriously,  just  as  he  takes  seriously  the  funds  for 
the  restoration  of  churches.  He  is  altogether  more 
literal;  he  uses  the  words  " right "  and  "wrong," 
as  to  the  meaning  of  which  many  Europeans  have 
become  rather  shaky.  He  takes  his  tradition  more 
seriously.  For  instance,  in  Chicago  I  observed  a 
headline  in  the  newspaper,  "Cotton  Exchange 
Fifty  Years  Old  To-day."  That  has  an  irresistible 
charm.  One  need  not,  from  the  false  vantage  of 
the  Oxford  turf,  smile  at  a  record  of  fifty  years; 
one  envies,  rather,  the  contentment  so  aroused. 
Then,  once  more,  American  complexity  appears — 
I  contrast  this  headline  with  the  fact  that  in  nearly 
every  American  city  I  have  visited  hotels  and  office 
buildings,  erected  round  about  1900,  are  being 
pulled  down  to  give  place  to  buildings  that  shall 
be  up-to-date.  America  delights  in  tradition,  and 
destroys  it  as  she  goes.  She  hates  the  thing  she 
respects,  burns  the  god  that  she  worships.  Once 
more,  here  is  a  sign  of  the  immense  vitality  of  the 


78  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

land;  you  discover  it  best  in  the  headlines  of  the 
newspapers.    Here  are  a  few  which  I  collected : 
"Ruth  Up— Oh,  Babe!    She's  a  Ball  Player." 
"Yo-ho!    Postman  Hooks  a  Man  Eater." 
"Sisler  is  Out  Front  to  Stick." 
"Spooning  Parlor  at  Union  Church." 
"Bathers    Stone    Pastor   Who    Flayed    Scanty 
Costumes." 

"Her  Corking  Face  Lands  Girl  in  Jail." 
You  may  laugh.  You  may  protest  that  this  is 
not  America,  that  it  is  a  libel  on  America;  but  the 
thing  must  be  at  least  part  of  America  if  you  sell 
a  million  a  day  of  it.  Moreover,  it  is  not  discred- 
itable. You  may  not  like  the  following  theatrical 
poster: 

GIGANTIC 

GATHERING   OF 

GLORIOUS 

GIRLS    IN 

GORGEOUS 

GOWNS. 

You  may  not  like  it  any  more  than  you  like  being 
told,  a  few  weeks  before  the  football  season,  that 
"the  old  pigskin  is  getting  ready  to  peep  over  the 
horizon";  but  all  that,  crude  as  it  may  sound,  is 
vital,  and  in  the  end  all  vital  things  make  for  the 
vague  and  unstable  condition  which  some  dare  to 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  79 

call  "good."  It  may  be  difficult  to  reconcile  it 
with  culture,  until  it  is  understood  that  culture 
arises  not  only  from  decadence;  that  all  poets  are 
not  emaciated;  that  many,  from  Whitman  to 
William  Morris,  have  grown  lyrical  on  women  and 
on  wine. 

Lyricism  takes  all  forms.  In  the  United  States, 
one  of  the  strangest  from  the  European  point  of 
view  is  the  adulation  of  business.  As  if  America 
were  reacting  against  the  traditional  adoration  by 
England  of  the  professions,  she  seems  to  set  a 
peculiar  value  upon  making,  buying,  and  selling 
things.  The  Dignity  of  Business  was  written  by  an 
American,  The  Romance  of  Commerce  was  invented 
by  another.  To  an  extent  this  is  a  defense  as  well 
as  an  evangel,  but  it  is  certain  that  America  has 
enshrined  within  business  a  portion  of  her  romantic 
impulses.  She  respects  the  business  man;  while 
ready  to  give  his  due  to  the  professional  man,  and 
more  than  his  due  to  the  artist,  she  intimately 
feels  that  business  is  the  finest,  as  well  as  the  most 
valuable,  function  of  man;  she  perceives  in  the 
business  man  the  qualities  of  a  hero;  in  her  view, 
he  is  doing  the  best  that  can  be  done  by  man.  An 
evidence  of  this  is  the  prevalence  in  the  maga- 
zines, not  only  of  business  short  stories  (almost 
invariably  concerned  with  smart  selling),  but  of 
actual  articles  on  business.    In  the  Saturday  Eve- 


8o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

ning  Post  I  found  an  article  on  the  role  of  the  pur- 
chasing agent;  in  a  single  issue  of  the  American 
Magazine  I  found  two  business  stories,  and  seven 
articles  on  business  or  interviews  of  big  business 
men,  total  well  over  a  third  of  the  contributions. 
And  these  are  not  commercial  journals,  but  popu- 
lar magazines.  It  seems  to  me  that  in  this  America 
performs  a  service;  she  is  dragging  down  the 
wooden  old  traditions  of  cultured  leisure  and  set- 
ting up  instead  an  ideal  which  some  may  dislike, 
but  which  is  a  new  ideal  for  new  times. 

One  of  the  first  things  that  impressed  me  in 
America  is  expressed  in  a  large  board  that  stands 
on  every  road  outside  West  Chester,  Pennsylvania. 
On  one  side  of  the  board  we  read  as  follows : 

this  is 

WEST   CHESTER. 

COME    RIGHT   IN. 

GLAD  TO    SEE   YOU. 

And  on  the  other  side: 

GOOD-BY. 

COME    AGAIN. 

COME    OFTEN. 

WEST   CHESTER. 

This  board  enraged  my  American  companion, 
who  happened  to  be  an  American  artist  of  the 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  81 

highest  order.  He  mouthed  a  furious  denunciation 
of  this  "fradulent  cordiality.''  At  last  I  told  him 
that  he  knew  nothing  about  it,  being  merely  an 
American,  and  that  I  could  assure  him  that  this 
sort  of  thing  did  mean  something.  It  might  not 
mean  exactly  what  it  said,  for  few  human  expres- 
sions do,  but  it  did  mean  something.  It  repre- 
sents a  dominant  streak  in  the  American  character. 
It  means  what  I  have  everywhere  experienced — 
that  America  is  really  hospitable,  really  sociable. 
Can  anyone  imagine  an  English  village  telling  you 
to  "Come  right  in"?  An  English  village  is  not 
communicative  enough  even  to  tell  you  to  get  out, 
which  at  bottom  is  its  only  emotion.  In  America 
the  stranger'is  not  welcomed  in  a  purely  mercantile 
spirit.  The  American  wants  trade,  but  he  also 
wants  to  know  things,  to  secure  new  impressions, 
and,  if  you  will  let  him,  he  wants  to  like  you. 
This  combines  with  the  old  pioneer  spirit  into  true 
hospitality.  It  may  be  thought  that  I  am  stressing 
the  pioneer  spirit,  which  seems  to  elucidate  the 
Middle  West,  but  I  do  believe  that  America  still 
carries  the  pioneer  habit  of  giving  hospitality  to  all. 
I  am  not  deceived  by  the  reasons  for  this;  the 
pioneer  had  not  a  warmer  heart  than  anybody  else; 
he  gave  hospitality  because  in  pioneer  days  he  had 
to  give  hospitality  so  as  to  enjoy  it  himself  when 
in  need.     For  many  years  in  America  you  had  to 


82  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

take  hospitality  or  die  on  the  prairie;  that  taught 
all  men  hospitality,  and  much  of  the  tradition  stays 
in  the  American  spirit.  That  is  why  the  stranger 
finds  America  so  delightful.  He  is  readily  admitted 
into  the  American  home,  while  he  may  spend  a 
lifetime  in  France  and  be  admitted  only  to  a 
restaurant. 

I  am  perfectly  sure  that,  on  an  average,  the 
American  is  warmer  hearted  than  the  European. 
I  have  had  many  instances  of  this,  and  one  of  the 
most  noteworthy  was  in  New  England.  I  am  fond 
of  country  walks,  which  the  American  seems  to 
dislike;  his  view  of  life  is  "automobiles  to  every- 
where and  violent  exercise  at  the  week  end." 
Therefore,  the  Americans  who  saw  me  trudging  the 
roads  were  sorry  for  me,  and  only  in  two  cases  was 
I  allowed  to  finish  my  walk  undisturbed;  in  every 
other  case  total  strangers  in  automobiles  stopped 
and  offered  me  a  lift.  I  began  by  refusing,  but  in 
one  case  they  looked  offended,  and,  in  the  second, 
drove  off  hurriedly,  obviously  thinking  me  insane. 
Well,  that  means  something;  it  means  sympathy, 
while  I  am  sure  that  any  American  can  walk  from 
Spain  to  Russia  without  being  offered  a  lift,  unless 
he  asks  for  one,  and  then  he  might  not  get  it. 

A  fuller  sense  of  the  American  affectionateness 
is  found  in  the  use  of  Christian  names.  It  surprises 
the  Englishman  to  find  a  clubroom  greet  a  popular 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  83 

member  with  a  shout  of,  "  Hello,  Jake !"  At  a  party- 
he  gets  lost  among  the  "Tommys "  and  the 
"Ogdens."  Also  he  is  puzzled  by  hearing  people 
described  as  "lovely,"  or  " beautiful. "  When  he  is 
promised  the  acquaintance  of  "a  wonderful  boy," 
it  is  rather  a  shock  to  meet  an  elderly  banker. 
You  may  say  this  is  superficial,  that  it  means  noth- 
ing, and  that  Tommy  will  skin  Jake  if  he  gets  a 
chance;  that  may  be,  but  there  is  in  all  things 
some  reality,  and  I  am  sure  that  the  American 
male  friendships  are  very  strong;  strong,  at  least, 
so  far  as  male  friendships  go.  Even  if  this  cor- 
diality is  superficial,  it  does  hold  something  warm, 
which  you  do  not  find  in  Europe.  There  is  no  bet- 
ter friend  than  an  Englishman,  if  you  can  get  him 
as  a  friend;  but  it  is  very  difficult,  and  until  you 
succeed  he  will  stay  on  his  guard.  On  the  other 
hand,  an  American  will  take  immense  trouble  over 
you,  waste  his  time  over  you,  drive  you  about, 
get  you  introductions,  secure  you  privileges.  Some- 
times this  is  ostentation,  sometimes  it  is  local  pride; 
but  human  sentiments  are  always  complex,  and 
there  runs  through  it  an  honest  desire  to  oblige. 

You  find  this  particularly  in  the  American  of  the 
middle-sized  towns.  •  New  York  is  too  large  for 
anybody  to  be  proud  of;  you  cannot  be  town 
conscious  in  a  city  of  that  size,  as  you  can  be,  for 
instance,  in  Cincinnati.    The  American  is  almost 


84  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

invariably  proud  and  fond  of  his  home  town.  He 
is  always  anxious  that  you  should  visit  it;  he  will 
accompany  you  and  show  you  round;  you  will 
offend  him  if  you  refuse  to  go  and  see  the  statue 
of  Colonel  Judson,  who  was  killed  at  Saratoga. 
I  am  afraid  that  I  have  offended  many  people 
already  by  writing  a  book  about  America;  nearly 
all  those  I  have  met  felt  that  the  book  ought  to  be 
about  their  city,  or  at  most  about  their  state;  I 
have  been  told  everywhere  that  "to  stay  only  three 
days  here"  was  akin  to  crime. 

I  take  here  the  opportunity  to  explain  that  I 
have  looked  upon  local  interests  as  components  of 
the  general  interest.  Topeka  may  be  a  great  city, 
but  it  is  a  great  city  only  because  it  is  an  American 
city.  It  is  difficult  to  explain  these  things,  because 
the  American  seems  to  take  them  in  a  rather  per- 
sonal way.  He  appeals  to  you  personally,  and 
takes  your  response  in  the  same  way.  The  per- 
sonal appeal,  which  embarrasses  many  a  European, 
is  to  me  unfailingly  attractive.  I  like  the  sign  near 
railroad  crossings,  reading,  "Stop,  Look,  Listen." 
At  St.  Louis  I  was  delighted  to  be  told,  on  the  trol- 
ley-car standards,  "Don't  Jay  Walk;  Cross  at 
Crossing."  I  felt  that  I  was  picked  out  from  among 
the  other  jay  walkers.  This  increased  my  vanity, 
and  everybody  knows  that  the  enhancement  of 
one's  vanity  is  the  main  purpose  of  one's  life. 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  85 

Besides,  there  is  again  a  certain  warmth  in  this 
picking  out;  it  is  an  extreme  case  to  find  this 
warmth  even  in  hotels.  At  one  of  these,  for  in- 
stance, I  was  every  day  presented  with  a  morning 
paper  bearing  a  label,  "This  is  your  paper."  I 
know  this  meant  only  two  or  three  cents,  but 
the  way  it  was  done  is  attractive,  familiar;  I  was 
being  remembered,  and  one  need  not  seek  false 
emotion  in  what  is  mainly  kindness. 

Kindness  is  almost  universal  in  America;  in  my 
first  three  months  I  collected  only  three  delib- 
erate rudenesses,  though,  doubtless,  I  deserved 
many  more.  I  found  everywhere  assistance  and, 
what  the  stranger  needs  so  much,  information. 
Sometimes  I  found  a  little  too  much,  for  the 
American  does  not  always  realize  how  lost  is  the 
stranger  in  this  immense,  complicated  system,  and 
so  burdens  him  with  detail.  The  American  is  often 
quiet,  but  he  never  refuses  conversation,  and,  on 
the  whole,  it  is  better  that  people  should  talk  too 
much  than  too  little;  this  contributes  to  general 
sociability  and  ease  of  intercourse.  Also,  conversa- 
tion helps  a  man  to  exhibit  himself.  Very  few  of 
us  ever  attempt  to  discover  what  the  other  man 
thinks;  we  talk  so  as  to  assert  to  him  what  we 
think;  this  helps  us  to  discover  what  we  really 
think.     I  suspect  that  the  American,  more  than 

any  other  kind  of  man,  his  mind  being  filled  with 
<7 


86  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

a  vast  number  of  physical  impressions,  needs  con- 
versation to  sort  out  these  impressions.  Burdened 
by  certain  forms  of  national  pride,  local  pride,  and 
personal  pride,  by  old  puritanic  views  and  new 
efficiency  views,  by  sentiment  and  by  ruthlessness, 
he  needs  conversation  as  a  sort  of  clearing  house. 
He  has  to  formulate. 

In  Europe  we  do  not  formulate  much;  that  job 
was  done  for  us  long  ago  by  our  family,  our  class, 
our  school,  our  university.  Most  Europeans  know 
what  they  think,  and  few  of  them  think  much. 
The  American  collects  so  much  more,  and  so  indis- 
criminately, that  he  needs  a  process  of  elimination. 
He  needs  to  tell  you  that  he  believes  a  thing  so  as 
to  learn  to  doubt  it.  For  instance,  one  often  meets 
an  elderly  American  who  explains  that  a  lazy 
young  man  cannot  live  in  America,  that  he  is 
looked  down  upon,  and  that  the  best  he  can  do  is 
to  get  out  of  the  country.  He  then  goes  on  to 
explain  that  Americans  work  sixteen  hours  a  day 
and  cast  the  proceeds  of  their  labor  into  the  laps 
of  the  noblest  and  purest  women  in  the  world. 
He  means  all  that,  as  he  says  it.  He  really  believes 
there  is  no  jeunesse  doree  in  the  New  York  clubs. 
He  believes  that  no  business  man  golfs  on  Saturday 
morning.  He  believes  that  the  women,  of  whom 
in  Chicago  alone,  last  year,  thirty-seven  thousand 
were  married  and  six  thousand  divorced,  are  the 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  87 

noblest  and  purest  women  in  the  world.  He  be- 
lieves it — until  he  tells  you  so.  Then,  unless  habit 
overwhelms  him,  he  settles  down  into  decent  doubt. 
When  he  criticizes  his  own  country,  he  is  weighing 
it,  unless  again  patriotic  exaltation  has  become  a 
habit.  Sometimes  it  has,  though  I  have  met  very 
little  spread-eagleism  in  America.  Possibly  spread- 
eagleism  was  politely  concealed;  possibly,  too,  the 
praises  I  have  heard  of  English  liberalism,  English 
culture,  and  English  tradition  amount  to  courteous 
sympathy  with  the  aged  that  once  were  great.  I 
do  not  know.  The  only  real  spread-eagle  I  met, 
who  told  me  that  in  America,  schools,  hospitals, 
and  courts  of  law  were  beyond  the  dreams  of 
Europe,  was  a  galvanized  American.  These  con- 
verts, you  know!  Still,  I  did  meet  a  lyrical  spread- 
eagle  once.    He  was,  he  told  me,  an  Elk. 

I  did  not  quite  know  what  was  an  Elk,  or  a 
Knight  of  Columbus.  I  gathered  they  were  friendly 
societies;  but  not  quite  in  the  English  sense.  So, 
having  heard  of  this  particular  specimen,  I  stalked 
my  Elk.  He  was  a  middle-aged  man  in  a  decent 
way  of  business,  whose  function  in  my  life  was  to 
get  me  in  seven  minutes  to  an  Elevated  station 
which  required  a  walk  of  nine.  As  we  ran,  I  inter- 
rupted his  conversation,  which  was  on  Kansas  City, 
lead  pencils,  women,  and  divinity,  and  said  to  him, 
"What  is  an  Elk?"     A  change  came  over  him. 


88  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

A  dignity  arose.  He  said,  "Sir,  the  Elks  are  a  body 
of  men  banded  together  to  assert  the  principles  of 
humanity  and  justice  that  have  made  this  country 
great."  I  said,  "Yes;  but  how  do  they  do  it?" 
He  said:  "Sir,  the  answer  is  simple  enough.  The 
Elks  uphold  in  this  great  country  the  traditions  of 
benevolence,  brotherhood,  and  mutual  help  which 
have  given  rise  to  the  American  spirit."  I  said, 
"Yes;  but  how  do  they  do  it  ?"  With  an  inflection 
of  impatience  and  pain,  the  Elk  replied,  "  Sir,  the 
Star-spangled  Banner  that  waves  over  these  lands, 
and  the  name  of  the  Bird  of  Freedom,  should  indi- 
cate to  you  that  the  pursuit  of  good  morals,  the 
maintenance  of  the  principles  of  purity,  of  public 
spirit,  social  service,  are  within  the  compass  of  the 
Elks,  and  account  for  the  position  and  progress  of 
this  great  free  democracy."  I  said,  "Yes;  but 
how  do  they  do  it?"  "This  is  your  station,"  said 
the  Elk,  and  hurled  me  on  to  a  sooty  stairway.  I 
shall  have  to  find  another  Elk,  but  this  one  is 
precious  to  me  in  a  way.  He  does  represent  some- 
thing that  is  fundamental  in  all  races — namely, 
lyricism.  He  represents  the  intoxication  of  suc- 
cess, the  materialization  of  the  effects  of  material 
comfort.  One  thinks  oneself  great  because  one  is 
big,  and,  instead  of  explaining,  one  proclaims. 

Nearly  all  Americans  will,  to  a  certain  extent, 
proclaim,  if  you  talk  to  them  about  America.    I 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  89 

have  met  a  few  Americans  who  criticized  America, 
but  they  nearly  all  belonged  to  the  intellectual 
class,  which  does  nothing  but  intellectualize.  Those 
people  take  a  queer  pleasure  in  running  down 
America.  They  vaunt  the  culture  of  France  and 
the  courtesy  of  Spain;  they  read  no  American 
books,  but  criticize  them  all  the  same.  They  are 
few,  while  the  mass  of  Americans  who  openly  boost 
their  country  is  large.  Many  of  them  will  criticize 
America  in  a  temperate  spirit,  and,  more  and  more, 
I  suspect,  the  educated  American  is  reacting 
against  certain  features  of  American  civilization, 
such  as  haste  and  noise.  One  thing  in  him  is  note- 
worthy— he  is  always  willing  to  discuss  America. 
He  will  state  her,  explain  her,  defend  her,  and  the 
subject  never  wearies  him.  That  is  a  profound 
difference  with  the  Englishman,  who,  confronted 
with  a  foreigner,  is  more  likely  to  talk  to  him  about 
the  foreign  land — that  is,  if  he  must.  The  Eng- 
lishman would  rather  stick  to  safe  topics,  such  as 
games,  or  London  communications,  but  if  he  is 
dragged  into  national  discussions  he  will  avoid 
England.  It  is  not  that  he  lacks  national  pride, 
but  that  pride  has  become  to  him  a  habit  of  mind. 
He  is  really  more  arrogant  than  the  American, 
for  the  American  takes  the  trouble  to  speak  for  his 
country,  and  proclaims  as  an  argument,  "I  am  an 
American   citizen."      The    Englishman   is   much 


9o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

worse.  He  does  not  trouble  to  proclaim,  "I  am  a 
British  subject. "  He  expects  you  to  know  that, 
and  at  bottom  does  not  care  whether  you  know 
it  or  not,  or  what  you  say  about  it.  The  English- 
man's complacency  is  immense :  First,  there  is  the 
Church-of-England  God ;  then  there  is  the  English- 
man; then  there  is  the  Englishman's  bulldog;  then 
there  is  nothing.  So,  realizing  this,  I  am  not 
with  those  who  are  offended  by  the  occasionally 
loud  American  patriotism;  I  know  only  too  well 
that  its  occasional  loudness  means  that  America 
doubts  itself. 

England  proclaims  her  nationality  less  than  any 
other  country  in  the  world,  and  she  values  it  more 
unconsciously  than  any  other  country  because  in 
England  everything  is  so  old  established  that  new 
things  do  not  matter.  That  is  why  our  naturaliza- 
tion is  so  easy,  while  nowadays  in  America  it  takes 
upon  itself  the  airs  of  ceremony.  Some  time  ago 
in  St.  Louis,  at  Judge  Gook's  court,  twenty-one 
aliens  out  of  thirty-four  were  refused  American 
citizenship;  one,  because  he  had  deserted  his  fam- 
ily; another,  because  he  had  deserted  his  ship; 
a  third,  because  he  had  been  in  a  race  riot;  an- 
other, because  he  had  kept  a  saloon  open  on  Sun- 
day, etc.  No  foreigner  may  comment  on  this,  for 
a  country  has  the  exclusive  right  to  decide  whom 
it  will  admit  as  a  citizen.    It  interests  me,  how- 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  91 

ever,  as  an  evidence  of  the  price  which  Americans 
set  upon  American  citizenship.  Citizenship  here 
has  lyrical  value,  whereas,  in  Europe,  it  has  only 
practical  value. 

The  naturalization  method  of  America  suggests 
that  a  sort  of  honor  is  being  conferred  upon  a  man 
when  he  is  admitted  to  citizenship.  No  doubt 
many  jingo  Europeans  would  understand  this  emo- 
tion, which  is  foreign  to  me,  but  it  may  be  that 
here  we  find  a  faint  indication  of  the  craving  for 
distinction  which  is  so  strong  in  the  United  States. 
It  is  commonplace  to  describe  the  American  am- 
bassador at  a  continental  reception,  distinguishing 
himself  from  among  the  uniforms  and  the  decora- 
tions by  the  Spartan  democracy  of  his  evening 
suit.  America  has  made  a  virtue  of  this  evening 
suit,  but  I  do  not  think  she  likes  it.  Seventeen 
seventy-six  was  the  hot  fit  of  democracy  and  long 
before  1920  the  cold  fit  came.  For  many  years 
Americans  have  shown  how  much  they  missed  the 
satisfactions  called  "  honors  "  which  are  given  in  all 
other  countries.  It  is  natural  that  men  should 
desire  honors;  it  may  be  stupid,  but  it  is  natural; 
the  English  are  frantic  with  desire  to  place  behind 
their  names  alphabets  made  up  of  M.P.,  D.S.O., 
J. P.,  F.R.G.S.;  it  is  a  satisfaction  to  the  great- 
grandnephew  of  the  fourth  son  of  an  Italian  count 
to  call  himself  a  count;    honors  are  a  marvelous 


92  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

means  to  orderly  government.  In  America  the 
need  has  shown  itself  through  the  many  marriages 
of  American  girls  to  members  of  various  aristo- 
cratic European  families.  It  is  something  to  get 
wealth,  but  it  is  not  quite  enough;  the  natural 
vanity  of  man  does  not  thrive  on  wealth  alone. 
That  is  why  the  Americans  have  invented  a  num- 
ber of  social  ranks. 

Business  titles  are  given  in  America  more  readily 
than  in  England.  Men  are  distinguished  by  being 
called  "president"  of  a  corporation.  I  know  one 
president  whose  staff  consists  of  two  typists.  Many 
firms  have  four  "vice  presidents."  Or  there  is  a 
"press  representative,"  or  a  "purchasing  agent." 
In  the  magazines  you  seldom  find  merely  an  editor; 
the  others  need  their  share  of  honor;  so  they  are 
"associate"  (not  "assistant")  editors.  A  dentist 
is  called  "doctor."  The  hotel  valet  is  a  "tailor." 
Magistrates  of  police  courts  are  "judges,"  instead 
of  merely  Mr.  I  wandered  into  a  university, 
knowing  nobody,  and  casually  asked  for  the  dean. 
I  was  asked,  "Which  dean?"  In  that  building 
there  were  enough  deans  to  stock  all  the  English 
cathedrals.  The  master  of  a  secret  society  is 
"royal  supreme  knight  commander."  Perhaps  I 
reached  the  extreme  at  a  theater  in  Boston,  where  I 
wanted  something,  I  forget  what,  and  was  told  that 
I  must  apply  to  the  chief  of  the  ushers.    He  was  a 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  93 

mild  little  man,  who  had  something  to  do  with  peo- 
ple getting  into  their  seats,  rather  a  come-down 
from  the  pomp  and  circumstance  of  his  title.  Grow- 
ing interested,  I  examined  my  program,  with  the  fol- 
lowing result:  It  is  not  a  large  theater,  but  it  has 
a  press  representative,  a  treasurer  (box-office  clerk), 
an  assistant  treasurer  (box-office  junior  clerk),  an 
advertising  agent,  our  old  friend  the  chief  of  the 
ushers,  a  stage  manager,  a  head  electrician,  a  mas- 
ter of  properties  (in  England  called  "props"),  a 
leader  of  the  orchestra  (pity  this — why  not  presi- 
dent?), and  a  matron  (occupation  unknown). 

What  does  this  mean  in  American  psychology? 
It  means  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  mankind  comes 
to  believe  in  itself  only  by  asserting  itself,  by  deco- 
rating itself  with  high-sounding  names.  This  is 
the  efflorescence  of  the  human  ego,  the  manifesta- 
tion of  the  adorable  childishness  of  man,  which 
holds  its  sway  under  the  pinions  of  the  Bird  of 
Freedom,  just  as  much  as  before  the  indifferent 
eyes  of  the  Lion  and  the  Unicorn.  It  is  an  evidence 
of  the  innocence,  the  splendid  capacity  for  taking 
clear-cut  views,  which  may  give  young  America 
the  leadership,  if  not  the  hegemony,  of  the  world. 

I  had  not  heard  much  about  the  soul  until  I 
came  to  America.  In  England  the  soul  is  an  un- 
derstood thing,  to  be  taken  out  on  Sunday  for  ex- 
ercise;   even  then  it  has  to  behave,  to  be  less 


94  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

evident  than  one's  shadow.  To  expose  one's  soul 
is  in  England  looked  upon  as  a  minor  indecency. 
Even  our  magazine  writers  tend  to  let  it  alone,  and 
cause  heroes  to  love  heroines  from  the  bottom  of 
their  hearts;  in  the  American  magazine  passion 
often  goes  a  little  deeper.  Of  course,  in  America 
the  soul  takes  peculiar  forms;  it  does  not  come 
out  as  an  ordinary  Christian  soul,  but  rather  as  a 
modern  soul,  an  up-to-date  soul.  I  do  not  want  to 
seem  irreverent,  or  to  poke  poor  fun,  but  when  in 
New  England  one  discovers  a  small  town  called 
Mystic,  one  feels  that  the  soul  is  going  too  far. 

For  the  soul,  in  its  new  form  of  mysticism,  and 
its  occasional  form  of  spooks,  is  a  rather  comic 
character.  Instead  of  being  merely  a  life  essence 
it  becomes  militant,  it  proselytizes,  burgeons  into 
new  religions,  into  forms  of  higher  thought,  into 
silence  guilds,  "national"  faiths,  etc.  Extraor- 
dinary attempts  are  made  to  reconcile  with  a  semi- 
revealed  religion  the  discoveries  of  what  is  called 
science.  This  is  profoundly  offensive  to  "science," 
which  hates  to  be  called  by  that  vague  name,  and 
would  prefer  to  see  religion  reconciled  with  biology. 
Consider  spiritualism,  for  instance,  and  its  ex- 
traordinary success,  so  great  that  at  a  certain 
moment  American  industry  was  unable  to  meet  the 
demand  for  ouija  boards.  I  know  nothing  about 
spiritualism,  but  it  is  repulsive  to  my  intellect  that 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  95 

it  should  be  possible  for  a  jovial  party  of  hardware 
merchants'  wives  in  Jacksonville  to  call  up  for  a 
conversation  the  spirit  of  Napoleon.  It  is  repulsive 
to  one's  intellect  because  it  is  incongruous,  and,  if 
it  were  true,  it  would  make  the  after-life  even  more 
intolerable  than  the  actual  life  fortified  by  the  tele- 
phone. The  whole  thing  is  pervaded  with  fakes 
which  have  been  exposed  again  and  again;  the  rest 
may  be  true,  but  what  is  interesting  is  not  the  ac- 
ceptance of  spiritualism  by  so  many  people;  it  is 
the  attempt  to  explain  it.  Still  more  remarkable  is 
the  attempt  to  deduce  for  moral  guidance  some  les- 
sons from  the  communications  out  of  the  unseen. 
Reconciliation  with  scientific  fact  is  generally  ex- 
asperating to  the  person  who  has  had  any  contact 
with  scientific  training.  I  have  been  quietly  told 
that  spiritualistic  force  is  akin  to  electricity,  and 
when  I  have  asked,  "What  is  electricity?"  I  have 
received  no  answer  I  could  understand.  There  is  a 
certain  type  of  mystic  that  whirls  itself  into  intoxi- 
cation by  piling  up  words  such  as  moron,  endo- 
plasm,  phagocyte,  dissociation,  subliminal,  etc.  It 
sounds  scientific.    In  fact  it  is  gibberish. 

Likewise,  love.  Most  Europeans  look  upon  love 
as  a  comparatively  simple  and  temporary  reaction, 
which  leaves  behind  it  a  certain  sediment  called 
affection.  According  to  temperament,  they  look 
upon  love  as  a  regrettable  physical  excess,  or  as  a 


96  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

natural  desire  for  intimacy  with  a  person  of  the 
other  sex;  or  as  a  joke;  or  an  act  of  business;  but 
they  very  seldom  look  upon  it  as  a  sacrament.  In 
America,  I  am  not  so  sure  of  the  men.  The  men 
do  not  talk  much  about  love,  and  I  have  a  suspicion 
that  they  do  not  place  it  on  quite  so  lofty  a  plane 
as  their  women  would  desire.  It  is  not  in  the  nature 
of  men  to  grow  rhapsodic  over  anything;  all  great 
rhapsodies,  it  is  true,  have  come  from  men,  but 
always  from  unusual  men;  the  ordinary  man  has 
a  way  of  placing  love  and  its  consequences  among 
the  material  facts  of  life;  in  Europe  the  women 
hold  only  slightly  more  refined  views.  But  in 
America  certain  peculiarities  appear  in  the  concep- 
tion of  love  which  the  American  woman  proclaims. 
(What  actual  conception  she  holds,  as  against  the 
one  she  proclaims,  may  be  a  matter  for  further 
discussion.)  The  things  that  people  proclaim  are 
quite  as  important  as  the  things  they  believe,  be- 
cause what  people  say  to  you  is  not  always  what 
they  think,  but  what  they  would  like  to  think,  or 
what  they  would  like  you  to  think  they  think.  The 
American  woman's  proclamation  of  the  nature  of 
love  may  be  the  proclamation  of  what  she  thinks 
love  ought  to  be.  Now  from  America  came  the 
phrase,  "  Divinity  of  Sex."  It  is  a  phrase  that  I 
cannot  understand;  I  can  discover  in  sex  beauty, 
lyricism,  exaltation,  all  that  is  delightful,  much 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  97 

that  leads  to  generosity — I  can  discover  all  that, 
except  "spirituality,"  or  "divinity."  I  suspect 
that  the  words,  "Divinity  of  Sex,"  merely  express 
the  fact  that  the  American  woman  sets  upon  her- 
self a  price  higher  than  does  the  European.  When 
giving  herself  in  marriage  to  a  man  she  appears  to 
lay  down  that  she  is  doing  something  significant, 
which  honors  him  by  preferment  and  her  by  self- 
sacrifice.  Also,  she  conveys  that  she  is  the  cradle 
of  the  race,  forgetting  that  nature  is  so  arranged 
as  to  demand  that  a  masculine  hand  shall  rock  this 
cradle.  It  seems  to  be  set  up  that  "love"  is  won- 
derful; that  "the  child"  is  wonderful;  that  "the 
race"  is  wonderful;  in  other  words,  exaltation. 
Whether  this  is  wholly  sincere  or  wholly  insincere 
does  not  matter  very  much;  the  American  man 
hardly  ever  echoes  the  point  of  view,  but  he  never 
controverts  it;  he  maintains  silence  and  seems  to 
accept  the  feminine  theory.  I  wonder.  .  .  .  Per- 
haps he  does  not  care. 

But,  leaving  aside  for  the  moment  this  sex  con- 
ception, it  is  interesting  to  observe  certain  bizarre 
intellectual  forms  that  have  arisen  in  America. 
They  are  more  self-conscious  than  ours.  In  Eu- 
rope, the  William  Blakes  and  the  Maeterlincks 
arise  more  spontaneously  than  they  do  in  America, 
because  the  surrounding  atmosphere  is  hostile  or 
wholly  callous.    A  European  mystic  has  little  honor 


98  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

in  his  own  country;  his  countrymen  are  never 
quite  sure  whether  he  is  a  genius  or  a  lunatic.  In 
America,  he  finds  swift  acceptance;  his  mysticism 
takes  upon  itself  the  appearance  of  reality,  because 
many  Americans  are  seeking  mystical  expression. 
Consider,  for  instance,  the  following  extract  from 
an  extraordinary  document,  now  in  my  possession, 
and  published  at  Los  Angeles: 

The  Psychological  Solution  of  Wars. 

An  interpretation  of  the  American  religion  of  the  new 
civilization,  the  foremost  representative  of  which  is  Dr. 
Julia  Seton. 

Cosmic  dynamics. 

Dynamic  metaphysics. 

To  win  the  war  the  cosmic  way, 

Set  minds  to  win  the  war  that  way.  .  .  . 

That  is  not  an  isolated  document,  nor  do  I  sup- 
pose that  it  originates  from  a  lunatic  asylum.  It 
is  merely  the  most  remarkable  among  a  number  of 
instances  I  have  taken  from  books,  stories,  and 
pamphlets.  It  is  an  intoxication  of  words,  of  which 
you  can  find  instances  even  in  best  sellers,  such  as 
Diane  of  the  Green  Van.  I  have  a  manuscript  be- 
fore me  supposed  to  be  a  short  story,  by  a  per- 
fectly sane  American  college  girl.  On  the  first 
page  I  find  the  word  "cosmic/'  twice;  the  word 
"dynamic,"  three  times;  the  word  "co-ordinate," 
once;  the  word  "universal,"  once;  the  word 
"harmony,"  three  times.    This  produces  a  certain 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  99 

type  of  literature  with  a  limited  number  of  words. 
Thus:  "universal  harmony/'  "cosmic  universal- 
ity," "dynamic  co-ordination/'  "co-ordinated  har- 
mony/' etc.  In  other  words,  jargon.  Now,  what 
does  that  mean  ?  I  have  the  greatest  respect  for  the 
American  powers  of  organization,  for  much  of 
American  literature;  I  realize  quite  well  that 
William  James,  Mr.  Theodore  Dreiser,  Mr.  Edison, 
Mr.  Arthur  Brisbane,  many  thousands  of  people, 
exhibit  variously  high  forms  of  intellect.  One 
might  make  a  similar  list  of  English  names,  but  the 
difference  is  that  in  Europe  we  have  only  two 
classes — the  intellectual  class,  and  the  class  which 
does  not  aspire  to  intellect — while  America  has 
both,  and  also  a  third  class — the  class  which  aspires 
to  intellectual  production  or  understanding.  That 
class  produces  those  extraordinary  literary  med- 
leys; it  finds  divinity  in  the  sex  emotion,  and  not 
in  the  hunger  emotion,  though  these  are  of  the 
same  kind;  it  aspires  to  contact  with  an  impalpa- 
ble world,  or  to  some  removed  and  exquisite  way 
of  life.  Mixed  up  in  this  vertigo  of  words  are  all 
sorts  of  intelligent  ideas,  ideas  on  democracy,  on 
birth  control,  on  poetry,  house  decoration,  etc. 
The  intellectual  river  rushes  into  every  back  water, 
causing  frightful  confusion.  Well,  that  means 
something  in  American  psychology. 

To  me,  this  impulse  toward  "cosmic  orders/' 


ioo  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

and  so  forth,  indicates  a  reaction  in  the  American 
mind  against  the  mechanical  civilization  of  which 
I  must  say  something  in  another  chapter.  The 
reaction  is  highly  self-conscious.  For  instance,  a 
little  while  ago  a  woman  said  to  me  that  a  visit  to 
Rome  might  be  expensive,  but  that  "it  went  to 
cultural  background. "  That  is  self-conscious.  The 
American  seems,  more  than  other  men,  inclined  to 
face  his  intellectual  processes.  His  moral  processes 
he  does  not  face  with  any  such  courage,  but  his 
intellectual  processes  interest  him;  whereas  the 
European  is  extraordinarily  afraid  of  self-knowl- 
edge because  this  might  lead  him  into  ideas.  A 
number  of  Americans,  of  late  years,  have  come  to 
revolt  against  the  old  ideas  of  "do  no  wrong,  but 
be  God-fearing,,;  and  "get  on  or  get  out."  The 
first  has  failed  them  because  it  was  a  purely  moral 
idea  which  did  not  content  the  growing  intellectual 
ferment  produced  by  scores  of  thousands  of  college 
graduates,  male  and  female,  who  had  taken  in  their 
culture  very  quickly  in  enormous  and  rather  indis- 
criminate doses;  the  second  idea  of  "get  on  or  get 
out"  also  failed  to  satisfy  them,  because  their 
contact  with  culture,  without  teaching  them  that 
culture  was  enough,  had  taught  them  that  me- 
chanical civilization  was  not  enough.  Hence  this 
rush  into  any  intellectual  road,  and,  therefore,  into 
any  intellectual  blind  alley.    All  intellectual  move- 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  ioi 

ments  are  rebellious  movements,  but  some  of  them, 
such  as  the  English  and  the  French  intellectual 
movements,  are  so  old  established  that  they  have 
become  traditional  rebels  against  power  and  ma- 
terialism; in  America,  where  the  intellectual  tradi- 
tion is  young,  they  are  still  in  natural  reaction 
against  surrounding  materialism.  Therefore,  they 
are  good  things. 

Many  European  intellectuals  sneer  at  the  "cos- 
mic harmony,"  but  the  fact  remains  that  the  argo- 
nauts are  trying  to  do  something.  Some  of  them 
are  trying  to  produce  works  of  art,  by  using  the 
language  of  the  laboratory;  others  are  seeking  a 
precision  in  life,  an  aspiration  which  they  can  no 
longer  obtain  from  the  Christian  simplicity;  yet 
others  are  trying  to  project  the  aloof  doctrines  of 
philosophy  and  metaphysics  into  a  practical  realm 
which  shall  have  application  to  their  lives.  If  the 
result  is  so  often  hasty,  hectic,  incoherent,  it  is 
largely  because  the  surrounding  atmosphere  is  so 
favorable,  because  the  Americans  are,  more  than 
any  other  human  beings,  interested  in  ideas.  In 
Europe,  a  man  with  an  idea  is,  on  the  whole,  a 
nuisance;  if  his  idea  is  practical,  he  may  be  sent  to 
jail;  if  unpractical,  he  will  be  put  into  the  comic 
papers.  But  in  America,  in  either  case,  he  will  be 
listened  to.  He  will  find  his  public  and  his  party. 
That  is  good  for  him  because  it  enables  him  to 


io2  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

express  himself;  but  it  is  bad  for  him  because  he 
finds,  ready  made,  an  appreciation  which  in  Eu- 
rope he  would  have  to  tear  from  reluctant  and 
sluggish  minds;  in  the  intellectual  sense,  America 
is  perhaps  the  only  place  of  which  it  can  be  said 
that  a  prophet  sometimes  has  honor  in  his  own 
country. 

The  easy  acceptance  of  the  fantastic  literature  I 
have  quoted  may  arise  from  the  general  American 
tendency  to  excess.  The  whole  of  the  American 
civilization  seems  to  me  willfully,  and  often  splen- 
didly, excessive.  The  people  seem  to  find  a  pleasure 
in  the  height  of  their  buildings,  in  the  size  of  their 
restaurants.  The  freak  dinner,  for  instance,  where 
a  musical  prodigy  was  concealed  in  a  bush  of  roses 
and  revealed  only  when  coffee  was  served,  where 
every  guest  was  presented  with  a  gift  worth  one 
thousand  dollars,  is  not  only  an  indication  of  reck- 
less wealth,  but  also  of  a  deliberate  desire  to  do 
things  largely,  magnificently,  excessively. 

One  discovers  this  in  the  lavish  magnificence  of 
American  hospitality.  It  is  delightful,  but  to  a 
pallid  European  it  sometimes  proves  exhausting. 
One  rides  to  too  many  places  in  too  many  automo- 
biles; one  meets  too  many  interesting  people;  vis- 
its to  the  opera,  to  the  theater,  to  the  country  club, 
to  the  famous  view  over  the  valley — all  this,  so 
kindly,  so  generous,  is  part  of  the  American  tend- 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  103 

ency  to  do  too  much,  too  fast.  They  do  not  think 
that  they  themselves  suffer  from  it,  but  I  suspect 
that  much  of  the  sensitiveness  of  American  public 
opinion  to  newspaper  stunts  is  due  to  an  over- 
stimulated  condition  of  the  nerves.  Excess  brings 
its  penalty  in  the  shape  of  reaction.  The  noise 
of  America,  the  swift  movement,  the  passion  for 
automobiles,  a  passion  so  violent  that  people  mort- 
gage their  house  to  buy  one — all  this  is  excess. 

I  have  been  in  American  towns  of  less  than 
twenty  thousand  inhabitants,  and  found  them 
closely  modeled  upon  the  big  towns.  The  big  towns 
provide  excess  for  the  millions;  the  little  towns, 
excess  for  the  thousands.  It  is  merely  a  matter  of 
proportion.  Sometimes  one  does  not  know  how  to 
behave.  The  Englishman  is  not  accustomed  to 
the  spaciousness  of  American  hospitality.  Amer- 
ican hospitality  will  explain  the  difference  between 
watermelon,  honey  dew,  and  casaba,  while  English 
hospitality  consists  in  letting  the  lunch  lie  about 
for  you  to  eat  if  you  like.  We  are  not  accustomed 
to  being  shown  a  house  in  detail — the  labor-saving 
appliances  at  work;  told  the  story  of  the  pieces  of 
furniture,  of  the  pictures.  The  Americans  are 
never  weary  of  this,  because  their  vitality  is  enor- 
mous. It  is  not  only  nerves  which  permit  them  to 
do  so  many  things  in  a  single  day;  it  is  not  only 
their  magnificent  climate,  which  is  bright  and  brae- 


io4  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

ing  like  champagne;  it  is  the  rude  strength  of  a  race 
not  yet  sophisticated;  it  is  the  hunger  for  impres- 
sions of  a  race  just  entering  into  possession  of  its 
powers.  Hunger  and  innocence,  this  defines  a  vast 
tract  of  the  American  mind. 

An  idea  of  this  tendency  to  excess  can  be  found 
in  the  advertisements  of  the  newspapers.  Adver- 
tisements are  never  very  discreet,  but  they  always 
adjust  themselves  to  the  taste  of  the  public.  The 
specialist  soon  finds  out  if  the  advertisement  is  a 
success;  if  it  fails  it  is  changed.  Consider  the 
two  following  extracts  from  advertisements.  One 
recommends  a  short  story  called  Two  and  the  Sil- 
ver Creese ,  and  reads  as  follows: 

Gosh !  if  you  want  tensity,  read  Two  and  the  Silver  Creese, 
a  Moro  love  story  by  Donald  Francis  McGrew.  When  a 
Moro  loves  he  does  it  in  a  2 I2°-Fahr.  fashion,  as  you'll  dis- 
cover when  you  read  this  little  asbestos  romance.  Don't  read 
this  near  the  stove. 

Here  is  the  second: 

Scrub  up  your  smoke  decks  and  cut  for  a  new  pipe  deal! — 
Say,  you'll  have  a  streak  of  smoke  luck  that  '11  put  pep  in 
your  smoke-motor,  all  right,  if  you'll  ring-in  with  a  jimmy 
pipe  or  the  papers  and  nail  some  ...  for  packing!  Just 
between  ourselves,  you  never  will  wise-up  to  high-spot- 
smoke-joy  until  you  can  call  a  pipe  or  a  home-rolled  cigarette 
by  its  first  name,  then,  to  hit  the  peak-of-pleasure  you  land 
square  on  that  two-fisted-man-tobacco  .  .  .  Well,  sir,  you'll 
be  so  all-fired  happy  you'll  want  to  get  a  photograph  of 
yourself  breezing  up  the  pike  with  your  smoke-throttle  wide 
open!    Talk  about  smoke-sport! 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  105 

The  reader  will  say,  as  perhaps  he  has  said  be- 
fore: "This  is  very  unfair;  you  pick  out  of  our 
newspapers  the  most  blatant  headlines  of  the  most 
ferocious  advertisements,  and  then  you  say  that 
indicates  the  American  mentality.  Allow  me  to 
tell  you,  sir,  that  in  this  country  there  are  millions 
of  sober,  educated  people  who,  equally  with  you, 
feel  that — ,"  etc.  Which  is  quite  true;  a  country 
which  was  wholly  occupied  in  scrubbing  up  its 
smoke  decks  would  not  be  a  success,  but  it  is 
equally  true  that  this  sort  of  appeal  must  corre- 
spond with  a  demand  of  the  American  mentality — 
viz.,  the  demand  for  lyricism,  which  takes  the  form 
of  rhetoric  and  vituperation. 

An  unfortunate  result  of  this  violent  stimulation 
is  the  national  restlessness.  I  am  no  enemy  of 
stimulation;  indeed,  I  believe  that  it  is  better  to 
be  too  much  stimulated  than  not  stimulated  at  all, 
but  one  can  overdo  it.  I  have  several  times  re- 
ferred to  the  automobile,  and  you  may  think  that 
I  am  an  old-fashioned  partisan  of  the  stagecoach, 
which  is  not  the  case.  It  is  good  to  see  that  the 
American  city  has  emancipated  itself  from  the 
horse,  but  I  do  believe  that  the  automobile  is  hav- 
ing an  evil  effect  upon  the  country.  It  has  made 
the  center  of  some  towns  almost  uninhabitable. 
Before  a  window  on  North  Michigan  Boulevard  in 
Chicago,  three  thousand  automobiles  pass  every 


106  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

hour.  The  night  is  filled  with  mechanical  sounds; 
the  throttles  are  open;  the  automobiles  are  parked 
outside  hotels,  and  the  engines  allowed  to  run;  it 
is  like  sleeping  in  a  garage.  The  streets  are  clotted; 
in  Fifth  Avenue,  for  instance,  between  four  and 
half  past  five,  any  fat  old  lady  will  walk  six  blocks 
while  a  vehicle  passes  two.  The  automobile,  at 
certain  hours,  is  making  the  traffic  of  Manhattan 
unmanageable.  It  will  drive  the  city  of  New  York 
into  the  immensely  costly  expedient  of  cutting  un- 
derground motor  roads  in  the  rock,  or  to  the  more 
revolutionary  method  of  building  elevated  roads 
over  the  old  elevated  railways  and  over  certain 
cross-streets.  All  that  because  scores  of  thousands 
of  people  want  to  get  about.  Watch  the  line  of  auto- 
mobiles in  the  afternoon,  near,  let  us  say,  the  New 
York  Public  Library;  not  one  in  ten  is  a  commercial 
vehicle.  You  will  say  that  this  is  luxurious  New 
York,  but  I  have  seen  the  same  thing  in  little 
towns  of  New  England,  in  St.  Louis,  in  Kansas 
City.  Traffic  is  mostly  composed  of  people  who 
are  getting  about  for  excessive  pleasure  or  hardly 
necessary  business.  This  leads  one  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  America  is  getting  about  to  too  many 
places,  trying  to  handle  in  one  day  too  many  jobs, 
and  in  one  night  too  many  pleasures. 

A  motor-car  run  after  breakfast,  a  heavy  morn- 
ing's work,  a  business  lunch  party,  an  excited  after- 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  107 

noon's  work,  dinner  at  a  restaurant,  a  theater,  a 
supper  party,  a  dance,  or  a  run  through  the  moon- 
light in  the  inevitable  automobile!  I  do  not  pre- 
tend that  this  is  the  everyday  life  of  every  New- 
Yorker,  but  it  is  the  life  to  which  most  of  the 
modern  New-Yorkers,  rich  and  poor,  seem  to 
aspire.  And  it  seems  to  be  speed  for  the  sake  of 
speed.  I  have  before  me  an  envelope  of  the  Postal 
Telegraph  Cable  Company;  it  bears  two  mottoes: 
"Special  Rush  Service,"  and,  "It  Will  Hurry  Your 
Answer  to  Give  It  to  the  Boy  Who  Delivers  This 
Telegram."  You  will  say  telegrams  generally  are 
in  a  hurry,  but  what  interests  me  is  the  emphasis 
laid  upon  haste.  This  leads  to  overstrain,  and  may 
perhaps  lead  to  hardness.  When  one  has  no  time 
one  is  not  gentle,  and  if  the  American  (honor  be  to 
him)  did  not  cultivate  gentleness,  his  would  indeed 
be  a  ruthless  country. 

Anyone  who  thinks  that  I  exaggerate  will  find 
confirmation  of  these  remarks  in  the  reactions 
which  appear  in  America  herself  against  certain 
sides  of  her  life.  For  instance,  the  other  day,  in 
the  Metropolitan  Magazine,  I  read  a  story  where  the 
hero  gave  a  melancholic  account  of  a  horrible  week- 
end, where  he  was  taken  by  his  hostess  for  meals 
and  parties  to  all  the  surrounding  houses.  He  was 
protesting.  Likewise,  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post, 
I  found  a  story  called  "The  Silken  Bully/'  which 


108  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

charges  the  American  woman  with  brutal  selfish- 
ness, lawlessness,  and  exploitation  of  her  husband. 
I  do  not  indorse  these  two  stories,  but  would  ob- 
serve that  these  magazines  are  very  popular,  have 
a  large  circulation,  and  do  not  want  to  antagonize 
it.  Therefore,  I  am  entitled  to  conclude  that  there 
exists  a  protest  in  America  against  dominating 
women,  and  also  against  restlessness  and  haste. 
Of  women  we  must  say  something  a  little  farther 
on;  as  regards  restlessness,  I  would  only  add  that 
I  have  met  many  Americans  who  deplore  the  ex- 
cessive activity  which  pervades  their  country. 
They  say  that  in  America  there  is  no  time  to  live. 
I  do  not  go  so  far,  but  then  I  am  a  European,  and 
am  so  impressed  by  our  sluggishness  that  I  am  glad 
to  see  America  overdoing  it  a  little.  That  may  be 
better  than  not  doing  it  at  all. 

There  are  also  against  the  national  restlessness 
personal  reactions  of  another  kind;  one  of  the  most 
interesting  is  the  new  type  of  cultured  American. 
The  older  type  of  cultured  American  was  in  a  way 
more  American  than  the  new.  He  was  still  con- 
nected with  Emerson  and  Longfellow;  he  had 
strong  moral  sentiments;  he  was  rather  ceremoni- 
ous, and,  on  the  whole,  rather  academic.  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  makes  an  amusing  caricature  of  cer- 
tain sides  of  this  type  in  Man  and  Superman;  an 
admirable  portrait  can  be  found  in  The  American^ 


THE    NATIONAL    RESTLESSNESS    MAKES    FOR    A    GAYETY    AND    CHARM    OF 

ITS    OWN 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  109 

by  Henry  James.  The  remarkable  fact  about  that 
type  was  that  one  could  never  imagine  him  as  a 
young  man.  He  was  always  a  well-preserved  man 
of  forty-five.  Well,  there  has  been  a  reaction,  a 
modernization.  One  of  the  reasons  is  that  during 
the  last  fifty  years  so  many  people  grew  rich  that 
they  were  able  to  send  their  sons  to  college;  that  in 
the  last  twenty  years  business  threw  aside  the  idea 
expounded  by  Mr.  Lorimer's  hero  in  The  Letters  of 
a  Self-made  Merchant  to  His  Son,  that  a  young 
man  was  ruined  for  business  by  a  college  education. 
I  have  met  many  Yale  men  in  business,  and  a 
fair  number  from  Harvard.  The  most  remarkable 
of  all  was  employed  in  a  large  corporation.  He 
was  young,  but  had  a  good  position.  As  we  came 
in  he  stood  up,  perfectly  dressed  in  a  suit  of  gray 
tweed,  wearing  spats  over  admirable  boots.  As  I 
observed  his  quiet  blue  tie  and  well-laundered 
collar,  his  close-cut,  but  not  too  close-cut  hair,  as 
he  welcomed  us  in  a  rather  high  and  unmodulated 
voice,  I  thought,  "I  have  never  seen  anything  quite 
like  this."  We  talked.  At  twenty-eight  he  had 
still  the  undergraduate  touch;  he  did  not  take 
himself  seriously,  as  did  the  old  type.  He  did  not 
talk  about  the  size  and  power  of  his  corporation,  as 
the  old  type  did,  out  of  vanity  or  nervousness.  He 
was  an  ordinary  "nice  fellow,"  just  any  negligent 
sophomore.    But,  a  little  later,  we  talked  business, 


no  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

and  the  man  changed;  he  grew  grave;  his  mouth 
hardened;  I  saw  something  in  his  eyes  which  told 
me  that  he  was  polished  only  as  a  sword  is  polished, 
that  he  had  what  an  Oxford  man  seldom  has,  an 
American  cutting  edge.  Here  America  is  produc- 
ing a  high  type  of  humanity,  and  she  will  produce  it 
more  and  more,  as  wealth  learns  to  value  good  breed- 
ing. It  will  combine  the  graces  of  the  Old  World 
with  the  force  of  the  New  World.  I  have  had  only 
a  glimpse  of  the  superman,  but  I  feel  that  he  will 
give  a  great  account  of  himself  in  the  times  to  come. 
And  this  is  not  an  isolated  instance.  A  day  or 
two  at  Harvard,  conversation  with  twenty  or 
thirty  young  men,  reveals  something  more  impor- 
tant than  knowledge;  it  exhibits  charming  natural 
manners,  modesty,  firmness.  I  wish  every  English 
visitor  could  spend  twelve  hours  at  Harvard  or 
Yale;  it  would  enable  him  to  avoid  the  absurd 
generalizations  he  often  makes.  As  an  American 
put  it  to  me,  "  England  compares  her  best  with 
America's  worst,"  which  is  absolutely  true.  Not 
only  does  the  Englishman  set  up  as  a  standard  his 
own  county  families,  conveniently  forgetting  Eng- 
land's profiteers,  England's  lower  middle  class,  the 
mincing  gentility  of  the  antimacassar,  the  bawling 
taprooms  of  our  country  hotels,  but  he  compares 
the  English  gentleman  class  with  any  braggart 
salesman  who  talks  to  him  in  the  club  car. 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  in 

It  is  lamentable  because  it  is  so  stupid,  lamenta- 
ble because  a  few  dinner  parties  or  week-ends  in 
American  homes  would  show  the  Englishman  that 
America  has  a  gentleman  class  akin  to  his  own,  in 
Pennsylvania,  Connecticut,  Virginia,  even  New 
York,  which  did  not  come  over  (steerage)  last 
week,  which  does  not  struggle  for  money,  does  not 
ask  personal  questions,  does  not  boast — a  class 
which  discusses  without  puritanism  any  subject 
you  like,  accepts  your  eccentricities,  cherishes  its 
traditions  without  obtruding  them,  indeed,  a  class 
which  differentiates  itself  from  the  English  county 
families,  to  which  it  is  generally  related,  by  a 
keenness,  an  openness  to  new  ideas  which  should 
sting  the  self-complacency  and  stir  the  dust  where 
lie  the  English  families  among  the  debris  of  Vic- 
torianism. 

All  the  same,  certain  things  startle  one  in  Amer- 
ica; one  of  them  is  the  occasional  outbreak  of 
puritanism.  For  instance,  when  my  agent  was 
booking  my  lecture  tour,  he  issued  a  prospectus 
provided  with  my  photograph.  A  woman's  club 
which  had  applied  for  a  lecture  date  refused  to 
engage  me  because  my  photograph  exhibited  me  in 
a  dressing  gown  which  exposed  my  neck.  This  is 
quite  true;  they  put  it  in  writing.  I  suspect  that 
this  exhibits  one  of  those  deep-buried,  puritanic 
American  strains;  when  I  think  of  that,  I  smile  at 


ii2  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

the  remark  so  often  made  that  "America  has  no 
traditions."  America  has  a  profound  ethical  tradi- 
tion. She  has  created  in  her  own  mind  an  aris- 
tocracy of  God-fearing  men  and  women.  She  still 
tends  to  estimate  people  according  to  their  morals. 
So  does  England;  but  England  tries  to  shut  her 
eyes  to  what  may  be  inconvenient  because  that 
makes  trouble,  while  America  feels  it  her  duty  to 
inquire;  in  other  words,  the  American  seems  more 
preoccupied  with  moral  questions  than  is  the  Euro- 
pean. I  do  not  represent  the  European  as  a  gay 
and  vicious  man;  I  know  him  too  well.  England 
has  her  Vigilance  Society,  and  France  her  League 
for  Repressing  the  Vices  of  the  Streets,  just  as 
America  has  her  Society  for  the  Suppression  of 
Vice.  Mr.  Comstock  completed  a  trinity  with  Sir 
Percy  Bunting  and  Mr.  Beranger,  but  in  America 
virtue  is  not  so  completely  given  over  to  special- 
ists. Virtue  is  everybody's  business.  I  have  dis- 
covered, notably,  that  in  a  club  of  men,  where  a 
member  drinks,  gambles,  and  runs  after  women, 
that  member  is  not  called  "no  end  of  a  dog,"  as 
he  would  be  in  England,  or  well  liked,  as  he  would 
be  in  France;  in  America  he  is  deplored;  you 
will  generally  find  that  in  America  it  is  virtue, 
not  vice,  earns  a  man  popularity.  This  is  not 
entirely  a  matter  of  repression;  I  do  not  know 
about  this  question  as  much  as  I  should  like,  but  if 


THE  AMERICAN  SCENE  113 

things  are  what  they  seem,  America  is  a  virtuous 
country.    Though  things  never  are  what  they  seem. 

The  outside  shows  the  American  rather  more 
like  the  Englishman  of  i860,  with  a  dash  of 
Nietzsche,  than  like  the  Englishman  of  to-day.  He 
is  domestic,  and  seems  to  care  deeply  for  his  home, 
his  wife,  and  children;  he  talks  about  them,  in- 
stead of  keeping  them  in  the  background,  and  he 
very  seldom  hints  at  irregular  adventures. 

Domesticity  is  part  of  the  American  insularity; 
it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  most  of  the  country  lies 
so  far  from  the  sea  that  external  influences  do  not 
operate.  And  yet  I  find  it  difficult  to  believe  that 
the  American  is  as  moral  as  he  seems.  He  could 
not  keep  it  up.  The  1910  census  showed  6  per 
cent  of  illiterates;  Senator  Borah  stated,  in  1917, 
that  70  per  cent  of  American  families  were  living 
below  the  poverty  line;  the  disease  records,  as 
quoted  by  Doctor  Biggs,  are  terrifying.  America 
is  not  worse  off  than  Europe;  indeed,  she  is  better 
off,  but  in  conditions  like  these  it  is  impossible  for 
national  morality  to  be  as  high  as  is  made  out. 

One  has  a  glimpse  of  that  now  and  then.  I  have 
before  me  a  publication  which  I  will  call  the 
"Underside."  Here  I  find  reports  of  sexual  crimes, 
advertisements  of  shops  where  they  sell  "books  on 
sex  questions,"  pictures  of  "girls  in  artistic  poses." 
I  find  a  publication  which  enables  men  and  women 


ii4  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

to  make  "friends"  by  advertisement.  There  are 
books  "exposing"  white  slavery,  and  even  "in- 
structions for  the  honeymoon."  All  this  stirs  in 
the  middle  of  the  drink  question,  among  advertise- 
ments of  proof  testers  and  stills,  which  are  offered — 
you  will  never  guess — to  people  who  want  to  make 
distilled  water. 

That  sort  of  thing,  which  you  find  in  every  city, 
suggests  the  secret  escape  from  moral  restrictions. 
The  newspapers  report  a  great  many  sexual  crimes; 
this  slough  which  I  stir  up  reveals  that  in  America, 
still  more  than  in  England,  vice  goes  slinking  and 
ashamed,  but  goes  all  the  same.  I  find  chaos  and 
conflict.  The  Federation  of  New  Jersey  Women's 
Clubs  demands  official  action  to  lengthen  frocks 
and  to  stop  cheek-to-cheek  dancing;  the  Federa- 
tion of  New  York  Women's  Clubs  demands  the 
removal  of  legal  restrictions  on  birth  control. 

I  doubt  the  thoroughness  of  American  puritan- 
ism.  I  have  come  across  a  number  of  men  who 
supported  prohibition,  and  their  cellars  are  full  of 
liquor.  Perhaps  that  is  why  they  could  afford  the 
gesture.  I  have  been  over  the  Library  of  Congress 
at  Washington,  and  discovered  that  this  great  in- 
stitution possesses  only  one  book  of  Anatole 
France,  the  mildest  of  all.  Between  the  surface 
and  the  depths  I  hesitate.  But  these  are  only  im- 
pressions; it  is  not  my  business  to  pronounce. 


IV 
THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN 

IF  I  felt  that  I  could  avoid  it,  I  should  not  write 
this  chapter,  for  I  hold  that  the  American 
woman  is  a  woman  before  she  is  an  American.  I 
should  rather  write,  with  an  American  slant,  an 
essay  on  woman  unqualified,  consider  her  as 
affected  by  the  primal  emotions  of  love,  hatred, 
ambition;  I  fear  that  my  title  may  misrepresent 
me,  that  it  may  imply  separation  of  the  American 
woman  from  her  sisters,  whether  British  or  Eskimo, 
which  is  not  intended.  But,  though  she  may  not 
differ  from  them  essentially,  at  least  among  the 
central  masses  of  the  country,  her  exterior  mani- 
festations of  character  do  establish  bright  contrasts 
with  the  woman  of  Europe.  Of  those  one  must  take 
note.  One  must  also  take  note  of  the  fact  that 
most  Americans  ask  most  Europeans,  "What  do 
you  think  of  the  American  woman  ?"  and  seem  to 
expect  a  reply  embodying  amazement  before  an 
entirely  new  human  species. 

The  stranger's  difficulty  is  made  all  the  more 
intense  by  his  endeavors  to  find  out  what  is  an 


u6  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

American.  Is  it  the  descendant  of  a  Pennsylvanian 
German  who  immigrated  a  century  and  a  half  ago, 
or  a  recent  immigrant  of  British  stock,  or  an  Irish- 
man with  forty  years'  political  work  behind  him, 
a  long  Yankee,  a  square-headed,  thick-jowled  sales- 
man called  Smith,  whose  father  came  across  as 
Strubelsky?  The  questioning  stranger  finds  the 
problem  more  puzzling  among  the  women  because 
fashion  levels  their  appearance.  He  watches  the 
procession  of  British,  Italian,  Jewish,  Slav  types; 
if  he  has  opportunity  to  speak  with  them,  their 
accent  is  uniform;  he  asks  himself  whether  their 
national  point  of  view  is  uniform,  whether  the 
American  woman  is  anything  but  a  European  var- 
nish in  America.  And  if  that  is  the  case,  then  the 
varnish.  .  .  .  What  is  the  varnish? 

If  we  assume  as  an  average  American  type  the 
woman  whose  parents,  of  immigrant  extraction, 
were  born  in  the  United  States,  one  thing  can  be 
said  of  her  in  general — her  physical  attractions  are 
very  great.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  lay  down  that, 
though  not  every  young  American  woman  is 
pretty,  she  nearly  always  knows  how  to  seem  it. 
She  is  excessively  well  groomed;  she  takes  of  her 
hair  and  her  hands  a  care  that  the  average  English- 
woman does  not;  she  gives  intelligent  thought  to 
her  clothes.  However  tired,  the  stenographer 
presses  her  skirt  every  day,  and  spends  upon  its 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  117 

renewal  money  she  sometimes  needs  for  food. 
She  outclasses  the  Englishwoman  because  she  is 
less  given  to  breaking  her  lines  with  bows  and 
frills;  she  takes  trouble  with  her  shoes;  she  is  very 
near  to  the  Frenchwoman  in  her  style  of  dressing, 
except  that  she  uses  stronger  colors  and  that  she 
sometimes  adds  to  a  simple  model  gown  a  trimming 
one  could  do  without.  Strong  colors  are  not  against 
her;  for  my  part,  I  am  rather  tired  of  the  eternal 
black  and  white,  fawn  and  gray,  of  Paris.  Some  of 
this  lore  seems  to  be  imparted  at  certain  finishing 
schools  where  she  is  taught  the  care  of  skin,  hands, 
hair,  which  is  never  done  in  an  English  school, 
where  it  is  despised,  or  in  a  French  school,  where 
it  would  be  thought  improper.  The  tendency  to 
decoration  is  so  strong  that  I  have  even  seen  sev- 
eral colored  girls  with  their  cheeks  rouged  and  their 
mouths  made  up.  This  had  a  little  exotic  air  that 
was  rather  pleasing,  but  it  seems  to  me  to  repre- 
sent the  highest  point  of  feminine  egotism. 

Reverting  to  the  problem  offered  by  the  admix- 
ture of  races,  though  there  are  no  female  American 
types  corresponding  with  the  two  dominant  male 
types,  there  is  a  common  facial  characteristic.  I 
noticed  this  soon  after  arrival,  but  it  was  two 
months  before  I  could  define  it.  You  find  in 
America  long  faces,  round  faces,  dark  skins,  and 
fair  skins,  and  yet  they  are  mostly  American,  in 


n8  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

this  sense  that  the  features  are  more  marked  than 
they  are  in  Europe.  That  seems  to  me  to  be  the 
definition.  The  eyes  are  larger,  the  lips  much 
thicker  or  much  thinner,  the  chin  and  jaw  lines 
more  pronounced.  The  American  woman  has  more 
emphatic  features  than  the  European  woman. 
What  is  interesting  is  that  in  the  cities  she  does 
not  recognize  that  nature  has  endowed  her  with 
strong  features,  so  she  powders,  uses  lip  salve, 
strengthens  her  eyebrows,  or  thins  them  into  half- 
circular  brush  strokes,  and  kohls  her  eyelids  much 
more  than  the  European.  Also,  when  the  fashion 
in  dress  tends  toward  undressing,  she  is  rather  ex- 
cessive. This  may  be  due  to  the  hot  summers;  it 
may  point  to  temperature  rather  than  tempera- 
ment, but  it  may  also  express  one  side  of  her  psy- 
chology. Where  the  European  woman  suggests, 
the  American  woman  proclaims.  If  I  may  gen- 
eralize so  far  as  to  say  that  the  English  attitude  in 
woman  is  to  sit  down  and  look  sweet  until  some 
one  notices  her,  that  the  French  attitude  is  to  edge 
away,  but  not  too  far,  I  suppose  I  may  define  the 
American  attitude  as  to  storm  the  mild  fortress 
which  is  called  the  American  man. 

I  have  been  told  that  the  American  woman  does 
not  take  pains  to  attract  men,  and  that  is  to  a 
certain  extent  true.  I  have  passed  six  months  in 
this  country,  visited  many  cities,  and  been  on  the 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  119 

lookout  for  any  interesting  facts,  but  I  have  never 
seen  an  American  girl  give  to  a  man  in  the  street 
what  the  English  call  the  "glad  eye."  That  is  a 
matter  of  method;  I  feel  that  she  is  merely  re- 
serving her  strength  and  that  when  she  decides  to 
go  over  the  top  she  does  it  with  a  speed  and  vigor 
which  a  European  would  call  unmaidenly.  She 
tends  to  bash  rather  than  to  entangle.  Excess  in 
clothing  and  decoration  does  not  at  all  mean  that 
women  are  trying  to  attract  men.  Women  don't 
dress  for  men;  they  know  better  than  that;  they 
know  better  than  waste  themselves  on  a  sex  so 
dull;  they  dress  for  one  another,  and  half  the  strain 
of  fashion  is  due  to  their  knowledge  that  they  are 
appearing  before  women,  the  hardest  critics,  and 
the  most  learned. 

I  have  talked  in  this  sense  with  a  certain  number 
of  American  men,  who  did  not  like  the  subject 
much.  I  find  the  American  point  of  view  on 
women  rather  difficult  to  understand.  There  pre- 
vails in  this  country  a  cult — we  may  call  it  gynae- 
olatry — a  verbal  worship  of  woman  in  the  abstract 
which  puzzles  a  person  like  me,  who  insists  on  look- 
ing upon  women  as  merely  human  beings.  When 
an  American  man  talks  to  one  about  the  nobility 
and  purity  of  women,  about  their  remoteness  from 
the  common  temptations  of  mankind,  one  is  quite 
as  surprised  as  when  one  meets  the  universal  cyn- 


120  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

ical  type  which  hates  woman  and  thinks  her  capable 
of  all  crimes.  Many  Americans  are  willing  to 
assert  that  there  lies  a  spiritual  beauty  in  the  soul 
of  woman.  This  again  puzzles  me,  for  I  do  not 
know  what  spiritual  means;  I  think  beauty  unde- 
finable,  and  am  suspicious  of  the  soul.  I  find  it 
difficult  to  identify  the  point  of  view  of  the  United 
States  of  Femininity,  because  Americans,  when  you 
press  them,  willingly  confess  that  "Frenchwomen 
are  loose,  Englishwomen  are  hypocritical,  etc.,"  and 
then,  by  degrees,  allow  you  to  feel  that  their 
women  are  not  as  other  women,  that  they  have  a 
superior  idealism,  that  they  are  lifted  above  the 
grossness  of  the  world — which  are  chilly  things  to 
say  of  women.  They  seem  to  think  the  American 
woman  incapable  of  sin,  yet  all  the  time  one  has  a 
queer  sense  that  this  rhapsody  is  recited  like  a 
lesson  which  they  have  read  somewhere,  perhaps  a 
lesson  which  has  been  proclaimed  to  them  by  the 
objects  of  their  adoration. 

The  American  woman  undoubtedly  proclaims 
herself  (by  word  and  deed)  to  the  uncommitted 
male.  She  is  a  good  partisan  of  her  sex;  she  thinks 
it  a  fine  thing  to  be  a  woman,  while  her  mate  finds 
no  special  pride  in  being  a  man.  I  think  she  her- 
self has  set  up  the  standard  of  virtue  by  which  her 
men  measure  her. 

The  American  is  more  than  the  European  woman 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  121 

conscious  of  her  importance.  She  is  conscious 
in  a  double  sense — namely,  she  thinks  highly  of 
women  in  general,  and  she  generally  thinks  fairly 
highly  of  herself  in  particular.  This  is  not  an 
attack,  for  no  respect  is  deserved  by  those  who  do 
not  respect  themselves,  but  between  conceit  and 
self-respect  lies  an  abyss  that  can  be  bridged  only 
by  common  sense.  Generally  speaking,  I  have 
found  few  American  women  unduly  satisfied  with 
their  own  charms  and  capacities,  or  their  position; 
but  I  have  found  a  somewhat  inflated  idea  of  the 
value  and  power  of  woman  in  general. 

Many  American  women  seem  persuaded  that  no 
standard  exists  for  their  comparison  with  the  Eu- 
ropeans, that  they  are  the  product  of  another  age, 
and  that  it  is  their  mission  to  show  mankind  what 
woman  can  do.  They  consider  that  in  coolness  of 
mind,  in  executive  capacity,  in  logical  faculty,  in 
beauty  of  spiritual  imagination,  they  have  attained 
heights  of  which  their  European  sisters  have  not 
reached  the  foothills.  Women's  writings,  in  Amer- 
ican books  and  magazines,  are  spattered  with 
phrases  that  exhibit  narcissism.  (There  is  no 
pathological  implication  in  this,  except  in  so  far  as 
self-admiration  is  a  pathological  reaction.)  For  in- 
stance, in  Women  and  the  New  Race,  by  Mrs. 
Sanger,  we  are  told  that  women,  by  controlling 
birth,  may  remake  the  world.    A  little  farther  on,  we 


122  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

are  told  that  upon  the  shoulders  of  woman,  con- 
scious of  her  freedom,  rests  the  responsibility  of 
creating  a  new  sex  morality.  These  pretentions 
seem  to  me  not  only  excessive,  but  also  exclusive;  it 
takes  two  to  make  a  morality.  If  women  were  to 
enforce  a  new  moral  attitude,  in  which  man  had 
no  say,  we,  who  for  years  have  been  attacking 
man-made  laws,  would  equally  object  to  woman- 
made  laws. 

This  brings  us  back  to  the  American  woman's 
belief  that  she  is  not  as  other  women.  I  have 
several  times  received  shocked  criticisms  of  the 
heroine  of  my  novel,  Blind  Alley,  who  has  a  pas- 
sionate though  incomplete  affair  with  a  married 
man.  In  every  case  I  have  been  asked  whether 
Monica  is  "a  typical  English  girl,"  and  told  that 
"no  American  girl  would  behave  like  this."  Such 
illusions — the  newspapers  being  filled  with  sex 
crimes — must  be  rooted  in  vanity.  You  find  this 
feminine  national  vanity  everywhere.  For  instance, 
I  was  brought  into  contact  with  a  woman  who  was 
to  show  me  that  I  did  not  understand  her  sex,  to 
explain  the  American  woman,  so  that  I  might  real- 
ize the  progress  and  the  change  brought  about  in 
the  New  World.  The  question  arose  between  us 
whether  courtship  should  be  practiced  as  an  art. 
I  had  ventured  to  write  down  a  few  views  as  to  the 
way  in  which  men  should  conduct  their  courtship, 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  123 

so  as  to  obtain  from  the  woman  they  love  the 
maximum  of  response.  I  had  indicated  that,  in 
my  opinion,  any  man  who  can  support  a  woman 
can  get  a  wife,  but  maybe  will  not  obtain  love. 
Thereupon  followed  a  detailed  statement  of  the 
process  by  which  the  self-esteem  of  a  woman  is 
encouraged,  and  elementary  notes  on  the  treatment 
of  rivals,  the  maintenance  of  freshness  in  a  long 
engagement,  etc.  These  views  infuriated  not  only 
the  lady  in  question,  but  three  more  of  the  same 
kind.  I  was  told  that  these  ideas,  these  old- 
fashioned  flatteries,  these  preambles,  these  devious 
devotions,  are  merely  boring  to  the  young  ladies 
with  direct  minds  who  go  around  to-day  deciding 
whom  they  will  matrimonially  devour.  It  was 
added  that  perhaps  Englishwomen  were  like  this, 
but  that  it  would  not  do  in  America.  (You  see, 
the  national  ending  is  inevitable.) 

What  is  one  to  reply  to  these  inflated  state- 
ments ?  Do  some  women  walk  the  world  blindly  ? 
Do  they  not  see  men  striving  to  gain  the  regard  of 
a  woman  who  hesitates?  Do  they  really  believe 
that  the  modern  woman,  after  a  period  occupied 
by  golf,  or  noncommittal  rides  in  the  Subway,  is 
suddenly  asked  by  a  man,  "Will  you  marry  me?" 
and  bluntly  replies,  "Yes,  let's  get  hitched.''  I 
think  many  do  believe  this.  The  woman  who  is 
intoxicated  with  the  progress  made  by  her  sex  can 


124  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

spend  a  week  on  Broadway,  or,  what  is  still  more 
revealing,  a  week  in  small-town  socials,  and  con- 
tinue to  believe  that  there  has  been  an  enormous 
change  in  the  relations  of  the  sexes.  She  believes 
what  she  wants  to  believe;  in  America  it  is  extraor- 
dinary how  many  educated  women  fail  to  realize 
what  a  faint  scratch  has  been  made  on  human 
nature  by  the  last  fifty  years.  They  seem  to  allow 
nothing  for  the  effect  of  tradition  on  the  uncon- 
scious or  subconscious  part  of  the  female  tempera- 
ment. Female  education  in  the  United  States 
began  only  seventy  or  eighty  years  ago.  If  you  go 
a  little  farther  back  you  find  Martha  Washington 
making  her  pickles,  fearing  God,  and  keeping  her 
mind  free  from  ideas  that  did  not  concern  her. 
Behind  those  three  generations  of  educated  women 
lie  about  two  thousand  generations  of  women  who 
were  not  cousins  of  the  ape,  but  women  with  a 
language  and  a  rude  civilization.  Now,  is  it  reason- 
able to  put  the  cultivation  of  two  or  three  genera- 
tions against  fifty  thousand  years?  Can  a  short 
course  in  a  prairie  university  so  entirely  do  away 
with  the  traditions,  the  compulsions,  the  inhibi- 
tions left  behind  by  a  period  so  long  that  it  makes 
the  history  of  Egypt  almost  news  for  this  after- 
noon's newspaper  ?  I  do  not  want  to  stress  this,  but 
I  do  think  that  an  elementary  knowledge  of  com- 
parative history  compels  one  to  laugh  aside  the 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  125 

idea  of  a  revolution  in  the  female  mind,  whether 
in  Europe  or  in  America.  The  difference  between 
this  day  and  a  hundred  years  ago  amounts  to  a 
varnish;  the  reformer  had  better  realize  that,  so 
that  his  reforming  energies  may  not  be  dulled  by  an 
overcomplacent  sense  of  achievement.  This  does 
not  mean  that  the  American  woman  is  wrong  in 
feeling  pride  in  the  conquests  of  her  sex,  nor  is  she 
wrong  in  thinking  that  she  has  gone  farther  in 
freedom  than  her  European  sisters.  Only  she  has 
not  gone  quite  so  far  as  she  thinks. 

In  the  days  of  chivalry  the  knight  went  on  his 
knees  to  his  lady,  but  he  took  this  as  a  formality. 
The  kneeling  attitude  of  the  modern  American 
seems  honest.  He  definitely  admires  his  women. 
He  does  not,  like  the  Parisian,  stress  their  elegance; 
like  the  Frenchman,  their  beauty;  while  vaunting 
their  smartness  and  good  looks,  he  especially  values 
their  moral  quality;  he  accords  them  a  certain 
dignity,  which  Europe  refuses  them.  America  is 
definitely  a  woman's  country.  But  when  you  con- 
sider the  facts  a  little  more  closely  you  begin  to  be 
doubtful.  I  don't  know  in  how  many  hundreds  of 
crowded  street  cars  I  have  ridden,  but  only  two  or 
three  times  have  I  seen  a  man  give  up  his  seat  to 
a  woman. 

I  quite  understand  that  American  life  is  hard 
and  competitive,  but  this  does  not  quite  accord 


a  vision  of  the  offices  where  these  women  carried 
their  messages,  of  the  man  in  charge  listening  to 
his  male  subordinate,  and  telling  the  woman  to  run 
away  and  play. 

This,  of  course,  is  not  a  generalization,  but 
merely  an  indication.  I  have  been  equally  surprised 
by  the  conquests  made  in  business  by  American 
women.  It  is  rather  a  shock  to  a  European  to  meet 
a  pretty  girl  of  twenty-seven,  to  hear  that  she  is 
employed  in  a  drug  corporation,  and  then  to  dis- 
cover that  she  is  a  director.  A  shock  to  find  a 
woman  running  a  lawyer's  office  entailing  annual 
expenses  of  seven  or  eight  thousand  dollars,  and 
making  a  living.  It  is  a  surprise  to  find  the  Amer- 
ican stenographer  earning  four  times  as  much  as 
her  European  sister.  All  those  shocks,  however, 
arise  out  of  particular  instances,  and,  though  I 
agree  that  the  American  woman  has  made  herself 
a  good  position,  when  I  go  through  a  business- 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  127 

reference  book  I  find  that  not  one  in  a  hundred 
of  the  leading  names  is  the  name  of  a  woman.  In 
America  man  still  rules;  all  you  can  say  is  that 
he  does  not  rule  women  so  harshly  as  he  does 
in  Europe. 

These  suspicions  as  to  the  actual  position  of 
women  in  America  are  strengthened  when  one  in- 
vestigates a  little  more  closely  the  achievements 
which  have  been  so  loudly  advertised  in  the  press. 
Consider,  for  instance,  the  position  of  women  in 
the  American  civil  service.  The  Women's  Bureau 
of  the  United  States  Department  of  Labor  has 
recently  issued  a  report  on  "Women  in  Govern- 
ment Service."  During  the  period  considered, 
86  per  cent  of  the  women  appointed  were  given 
salaries  lower  than  #1,300  a  year,  while  only  36 
per  cent  of  the  men  were  given  positions  as  low  as 
this.  The  report  goes  on  to  show  that  as  the 
amount  of  salary  advances,  the  number  of  women 
appointed  decreases.  For  positions  higher  than 
#1,300  a  year,  only  5  per  cent  of  the  women  are 
appointed,  as  against  46  per  cent  of  the  men.  If 
we  view  the  situation  a  little  differently,  and  com- 
pare government  appointments  with  the  number  of 
women  who  passed  the  requisite  examination  for 
the  higher  posts,  we  find  that,  while  59  per  cent  of 
the  female  candidates  passed  the  clerical  tests  for 
middle  positions,  the  commissioners  did  not  ap- 


128  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

point,  as  one  might  think  they  would,  59  per  cent 
of  the  women  to  the  middle  positions.  They 
appointed  72  per  cent;  the  difference  of  13  per 
cent  represents  female  candidates  who  were  given 
a  middle  position  instead  of  the  superior  position 
they  had  won  in  open  contest.  And  if  we  consider 
the  posts  where  special  training  is  required,  while 
30  per  cent  of  the  female  candidates  were  eligible, 
only  15  per  cent  were  appointed.  As  the  examina- 
tions harmonize  as  nearly  as  possible  with  the  va- 
cancies, it  follows  that  in  every  case  women  were 
deprived  of  anything  between  a  quarter  and  a  half 
of  the  rights  which  they  obtained  by  open  examina- 
tion in  competition  with  the  men. 

The  reader  should  not  conclude  that  I  am  mak- 
ing a  case  against  the  treatment  of  women  in 
America.  I  am  quite  aware  that  in  every  way  of 
life  woman  is  better  treated  in  the  United  States 
than  in  any  other  part  of  the  world,  that  the  mar- 
riage and  divorce  laws,  notably  in  many  states,  are 
her  excessive  partisans.  But  it  would  be  foolish 
to  believe  that  woman's  battle  has  been  completely 
won  in  the  United  States.  She  still  has  a  great 
deal  to  do  to  achieve  equality;  she  had  better  re- 
alize this,  and  struggle  for  it,  than  be  led  away  by 
sentimental  eulogies  of  her  achievements,  and  more 
or  less  dishonest  proclamations  of  her  supremacy. 

Two  instances  of  the  lyrical  exaggerations  which 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  129 

lead  American  women  to  believe  that  the  male 
world  is  open  to  them,  I  find  in  an  article  in  the 
Pictorial  Review  called  "Two  Women  Lawyers  at 
the  Head  of  Their  Profession/'  One  is  Mrs. 
Georgia  P.  Bullock,  deputy  district  attorney  and 
public  prosecutor  of  Los  Angeles.  That  is  a  high- 
sounding  title,  and  one  must  not  underrate  the 
achievement  of  Mrs.  Bullock;  but,  if  one  looks 
carefully  into  details  of  her  work,  one  cannot  avoid 
the  feeling  that  she  is  the  deputy  district  attorney 
with  emphasis  on  the  deputy.  It  is  true  that  she 
goes  into  court  to  prosecute,  but  it  is  permissible 
to  doubt  whether  she  is  given  the  more  important 
prosecutions.  Furthermore,  her  special  work  ap- 
pears to  be  the  settlement  of  disputes  between  hus- 
bands and  wives,  the  collection  of  money  from  de- 
faulting husbands.  In  other  words,  she  seems  to 
be  merely  a  probation  officer  on  a  large  scale.  I 
do  not  say  that  her  duties  are  unimportant,  but 
I  do  say  that  they  are  much  less  responsible  and 
much  less  independently  performed  than  her  title 
would  suggest. 

The  second  case  is  that  of  Mrs.  Annette  Abbott 
Adams,  described  as  the  first  woman  Assistant 
Attorney-General  of  the  United  States.  Here,  in- 
deed, is  a  high-sounding  title,  but  as  one  reads  the 
details  one  feels  more  and  more  that  Mrs.  Adams 
is  not  so  much  the  Assistant  Attorney-General  as 


i3o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

the  assistant  to  the  Attorney-General.  Here  again 
is  a  woman  who  goes  into  court  and  pleads,  but 
here  once  more  is  a  woman  whose  work  seems 
mainly  to  be  the  examination  and  preparation  of 
cases  for  the  decision  of  her  male  chief.  Hers  is  a 
powerful  post,  but  it  has  nothing  of  the  supreme. 
She  is  not  mistress  of  her  office.  She  may  have 
men  under  her,  but  she  has  men  over  her.  Until 
a  woman  actually  occupies  a  Cabinet  post,  or  the 
sole  headship  of  a  government  department,  the 
case  will  not  have  been  made;  until  then  one  is 
justified  in  saying  that  the  people  who  make  out 
that  the  American  woman  has  got  to  the  top  are 
either  untruthful  or  sentimental. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  features  of  the 
American  woman  question  is  the  supremacy  of  the 
girl.  In  Europe  the  girl  hardly  counts  at  all;  in 
Scandinavia,  Russia,  Germany,  she  has,  to  a  certain 
extent,  emancipated  herself,  but  has  thereby  lost 
a  little  in  bourgeois  consideration.  In  the  south  of 
Europe,  and  even  in  France,  she  is  still  a  chattel  of 
the  family,  while  in  England  she  is  completely 
eclipsed  by  the  young  married  woman.  It  is  a 
remarkable  thing  in  an  American  summer  hotel  to 
see  the  owners  of  automobiles  filling  their  cars  with 
young  girls,  while  the  young  matrons  are  left 
behind.  Yet  the  young  married  woman  is  far  more 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  131 

attractive,  far  more  amusing  than  the  bread-and- 
butter  miss.  Except  in  rather  fast  circles,  she 
seems  in  America  to  be  almost  entirely  ignored. 
Everything  goes  to  the  girl — money  for  college,  for 
training,  social  consideration;  she  is  encouraged  to 
waywardness,  as  if  the  men  took  a  delight  in  her 
freshness,  her  mischievousness,  and  enjoyed  her 
youthful  petulance.  It  is  rather  regrettable  in  a 
way,  for  it  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  the  American 
woman's  good  time  is  rather  short. 

After  her  marriage  she  can  assert  herself  over  her 
husband;  if  she  is  rich  she  can  attain  a  big  social 
position,  be  feted,  photographed,  but  she's  not  the 
catch  of  the  season;  she  is  the  caught.  If  she  is 
poor,  she  is  taken  little  notice  of;  she  is  not  counted 
as  a  woman;  her  husband  is  supposed  to  provide 
courtship,  and  he  is  seldom  at  home.  If,  as  is  most 
likely,  she  has  to  do  a  lot  of  housework  because  she 
finds  no  help,  she  loses  her  looks  rather  quickly. 
Her  skin  dries;  at  twenty  she  is  exquisite;  at 
thirty-five  nerves  and  boredom  have  aged  her. 
Since  her  marriage  she  has  not  counted.  Many  will 
remember  the  triumph  of  Miss  Alice  Roosevelt, 
who  was  described  as  "Princess  Alice";  since  her 
marriage  she  has  not  been  heard  of  as  "Queen 
Alice."  She  may  now  be  a  social  leader,  but  she 
has  ceased  to  "star."  A  debutante  is  a  normal 
star,  which  sets  when  changed  from  Miss  to  Mrs. 


i32  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

The  American  girl  has  the  time  of  a  butterfly;  it 
is  not  a  long  one,  but  it  is  a  better  time  than  the 
European's.  If  she  works,  it  is  a  national  custom 
to  entertain  her,  to  give  her  things,  and  this  may 
have  something  to  do  with  the  development  of  her 
character.  I  hesitate  to  dissect  anything  so  com- 
plex. I  suppose  that  excessively  hard  pictures  of 
her  were  made  by  Henry  James  in  Daisy  Miller,  by 
Mr.  Owen  Johnson  in  The  Salamander,  and  by 
Mrs.  Wharton  in  The  Custom  of  the  Country,  but 
I  do  believe  that  a  certain  hardness  must  afflict 
the  American  girl,  owing  to  excess  of  good  things 
which  she  enjoys  very  early  and  very  easily.  When 
one  obtains  things  easily  one  looks  upon  them  as 
a  natural  right.  If  then  one's  rights  are  flouted 
one  grows  peevish. 

It  is  rather  interesting  to  listen  to  the  American 
girl  when  she  visits  England;  she  can't  understand 
the  man  who  gives  her  no  candies  or  flowers,  who 
seldom  takes  her  to  the  theater,  and  who  actually 
expects  her  to  amuse  him  instead  of  working  to 
amuse  her.  I  confess  that  I  don't  like  her  as  well 
as  the  American  married  woman,  who  has  been 
reduced  by  work  and  difficulties  to  a  state  devoid 
of  petulance.  She  has  lost  a  few  illusions.  She  is 
no  longer  leading  the  rather  excited  life  of  the 
well-to-do  girl,  and  the  fairly  excited  after-hours 
life  of  the  popular  working  girl.    An  Englishwoman 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  133 

who  has  lived  In  America  many  years  sends  in  the 
following  criticism  of  the  American  girl :  "  She  ac- 
cepts life  as  it  is  and  makes  the  most  of  it;  she 
neither  digs  up  corpses  nor  broods  over  injuries; 
she  goes  on  to  the  next  adventure  life  offers,  ignor- 
ing the  past.  She  sheds  few  tears,  would  consider 
the  fostering  of  her  soul  absurd,  the  pursuit  of 
beauty  irrelevant.  She  lives  untouched  by  beauty 
and  sorrow/'  I  reproduce,  but  neither  assent  to 
nor  differ  from  this. 

It  is  the  American  girl,  more  than  the  American 
woman,  who  embodies  the  national  restlessness. 
She  is  always  meeting  young  men  in  a  queer,  com- 
radely way;  she  is  always  on  the  telephone,  making 
a  date;  automobiles  appear  for  her  late  in  the 
evening;  she  goes  out  with  the  moon  and  returns 
with  the  sun.  There  is  something  bright,  almost 
metallic  about  her,  and  the  Englishman  grows  be- 
wildered when  he  tries  to  understand  the  process 
of  starvation  which  turns  her  into  the  modest  and 
even  resigned  American  wife.  I  am  picking  my 
words;  in  spite  of  their  proclamations,  I  doubt 
whether  the  American  man  is  quite  as  much  at  his 
wife's  feet  as  is  made  out.  It  seems  to  me  that  he 
respects  his  wife  as  he  respects  an  expensive  pic- 
ture. He  talks  a  great  deal  about  the  high  quali- 
ties of  women,  but  tends  to  treat  them  like  little 

dears.    He  seems  to  revere  women  in  general,  but 
10 


i34  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

perhaps  not  in  particular,  his  wife  being  the  most 
particular  of  instances. 

In  America  women  do  have  a  good  deal  of  power, 
but  I  suspect  that  this  is  because  the  men  are  so 
busy  that  they  have  no  time  to  argue,  and  too  little 
time  to  exercise  all  the  powers  themselves.  So 
they  hand  over  some  of  the  minor  powers,  and 
honestly  believe  that  this  constitutes  a  female 
coronation.  That  is  why  the  well-to-do  married 
woman  in  America  generally  strikes  me  as  unhappy. 
While  the  poor  man's  wife  lives  the  universal  hard 
but  human  life  of  the  poorer  European  wife,  the 
wife  of  the  man  of  middle  fortune  seems  eaten  up 
by  vain  ambitions.  But  even  she  is  less  unhappy 
than  the  rich  wife,  for  her  husband  works  short 
hours  and  gives  her  companionship,  while  too  many 
rich  wives  see  their  overworked,  business-haunted 
husbands  only  at  an  occasional  evening  meal,  when 
guests  separate  them;  she  is  alone  while  he  travels; 
hence  her  frantic  search  for  amusements,  faiths, 
causes,  social  life,  movement,  always  movement. 
My  mental  picture  of  the  rich  American  wife 
is  a  grim  one;  while  the  rich  Englishwoman  is 
often  bored  by  her  husband,  the  American  equiv- 
alent is  bored  by  having  no  husband  at  all. 
Within  a  few  years  of  her  marriage  her  lover 
goes  back  to  his  office  and  does  not  come  out 
again. 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  135 

At  a  small  but  high-browed  gathering  {often,  but 
not  only,  in  America). 

Young  Lady:  "Mr.  George,  I'm  just  crazy  to 
know  what  you  think  of  Miss  May  Sinclair." 

Mr.  George:  "Well 

Young  Lady:  "Don't  you  think  her  books  are 
full  of  cosmic  universality?  Oh,  do  tell  me  what 
you  think." 

Mr.  George:   "You  mean  ..." 

Young  Lady:  "What  I  like  about  Miss  Sin- 
clair is  just  that — her  sense  of  the  universal  cosmos. 
Now  in  my  home  town  in  Oregon  they  want  to 
know  just  what  you  think." 

Mr.  George:   "From  the  ..." 

Young  Lady:  "If  you  think  she  co-ordinates 
the  analyses  of  the  psyche  of  the  characters,  then 
what  I  want  to  know  is  how  she  correlates  the 
theory  of  the  moron  with  that  of  the  urning.  ..." 

Mr.  George:   "I  .  .  ." 

[Young  Lady  discusses  Bergson  and  the  Matri- 
archate. 

Mr.  George:    "You  ..." 

[Young  Lady  discusses  Sinn  Fein  and  the  decay 
of  taste. 

Mr.  George:   "If  .  .  ." 

[Young  Lady  discusses  Mr.  Carl  Sandburg,  Long- 
fellow, psychoanalysis,  Mrs.  Fiske,  prohibition, 
spooks,  Alexander  Hamilton,  the  negro  question, 


136  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

the  Barrymores,  the  exchange  problem,,  and  Yel- 
lowstone Park, 

Mr.  George:   "When  .  .  ." 

Young  Lady  {rapturously):  "I'm  so  glad  to 
have  met  you.  You've  no  idea,  Mr.  George,  how 
they  hang  upon  your  slightest  word  way  out  in 
Oregon.     I  do  love  to  hear  you  talk." 

[She  continues.  Mr.  George  is  later  discovered 
concealed  in  the  refrigerator. 

That  sort  of  thing  rather  worries  one.  Because 
of  it,  perhaps,  I  have  spent  in  America  little  time  in 
literary  circles  and  much  more  in  places  where 
they  talked  of  copper  and  of  corn.  But,  though  it  is 
tiring,  it  is  not  so  absurd  as  it  sounds;  indeed,  it 
has  significances  which  should  be  neither  ignored 
nor  derided.  My  impression  of  the  American 
woman  is  that  on  an  average  she  is  intellectually 
more  developed  than  the  European;  potentially, 
she  is  not  superior,  but  in  development  she  is.  The 
American  woman  is  to  the  European  what  a  tilled 
field  is  to  an  untilled  field.  She  is  infinitely  better 
informed,  more  interested  in  new  ideas,  more  ready 
to  accept  a  new  theory  of  life,  just  as  her  man, 
compared  with  the  European,  is  readier  to  accept 
a  new  invention.  There  is  hardly  anything  in 
which  one  may  not  hope  to  interest  her;  the 
traveling  Englishman  is  continually  surprised  to 
encounter  in  cities  of  thirtv  thousand  inhabitants 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  137 

large  groups  of  clubwomen  who  meet  month  after 
month,  and  year  after  year,  to  hear  lectures  on 
literature,  social  questions,  foreign  lands.  He  dis- 
covers in  their  houses  the  best  new  books;  he  is 
asked  questions  which  reveal  acquaintance  with  the 
world's  movements;  he  receives  the  expression  of 
views  which  only  a  year  before  were  being  ex- 
pounded at  the  Sorbonne  or  at  Jena.  England  has 
nothing  like  this.  In  a  small  English  town  you  gen- 
erally discover  one  or  two  delightful  and  cultured 
women,  who  are  more  or  less  miserable  because 
they  find  the  men  as  stupid  as  men  know  how  to 
be,  and  intelligent  female  society  nonexistent.  The 
brilliant  Englishwoman  in  the  country  must  shut 
herself  up  with  her  books;  there  is  nothing  else 
for  her.  The  brilliant  American  woman,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  this  unique  outlet  of  club  life,  which 
draws  together  most  of  the  women  of  brains  that 
live  in  the  locality,  and  also  a  large  number  of 
women  of  inferior  intellectual  capacity,  who  hon- 
estly want  to  improve  that  intellectual  capacity, 
are  anxious  to  get  hold  of  all  the  new  ideas  and 
manifestations  of  art.  Only  in  very  big  English 
cities  do  women  have  clubs,  and  even  then  one 
might  say  that  in  those  institutions  the  English- 
women assemble  to  gulp  tea,  while  the  American 
women  assemble  to  gulp  ideas. 

Many  American  men  laugh  at  the  women's  clubs. 


138  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

They  find  these  places  humorous.  Also  they  like 
to  pretend  that  clubwomen  wear  bloomers.  But, 
having  by  now  visited  a  large  number  of  women's 
clubs  all  over  the  country,  I  know  quite  well  that 
every  one  of  them  is  a  center  for  culture  and  stimu- 
lus. The  eagerness  with  which  an  idea  is  received 
by  American  clubwomen  is  the  most  hopeful  side 
in  American  civilization.  It  seems  the  most  hope- 
ful because  the  action  of  the  women,  which  is  now 
only  beginning  to  make  itself  felt,  amounts  to  a 
reaction  against  the  money-getting  male.  Leaving 
aside  the  artist  and  the  scientific  genius,  it  appears 
that  in  all  countries  the  man  is  to-day  less  vivid, 
less  open-minded,  than  the  woman.  This  is  par- 
ticularly the  case  in  England,  where  the  average 
man  is  a  stupefied  creature,  intellectually  much 
inferior  to  his  wife.  The  average  American  woman 
is,  it  is  true,  less  superior  to  the  average  American 
man  than  is  the  average  Englishwoman  to  the 
average  Englishman,  but  she  does  outdo  him  in 
her  keenness  for  new  outlooks.  Thus  she  becomes 
the  force  that  leads  to  the  cultural  development  of 
her  country. 

Naturally,  if  I  may  use  an  old  aphorism,  "one 
makes  no  omelet  without  breaking  eggs."  The 
sad  conversation  I  had  with  a  young  lady,  which 
is  reproduced  above,  is  an  instance  of  what  can 
happen  to  a  woman  who  has  taken  in  her  culture 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  139 

in  too  large  doses  and  too  fast.  Very  commonly, 
when  you  meet  a  well-educated  American  woman, 
you  find  that  the  conversation  runs  more  than  is 
comfortable  on  French  literature,  Claudel,  Marcel 
Proust,  Paul  Fort;  you  will  suffer  quotations  from 
Westermarck;  you  may  drift  into  general  ideas, 
philosophy,  psychology.  That  embarrasses  the 
Englishman  for  two  reasons:  one  of  them  is  that 
he  is  accustomed  to  talking  to  women  about  plays, 
games,  holiday  resorts,  etc.,  or,  if  he  belongs  to  a 
more  evolved  type,  of  love.  The  second  reason  is 
that  he  is  not  accustomed  to  being  told  what  the 
woman  thinks;  he  is  accustomed  to  tell  her  what 
he  thinks,  and  to  being  helped  to  develop  what  he 
chooses  to  call  his  ideas  by  a  minimum  of  contra- 
diction. So  the  American  woman  worries  him.  He 
finds  that  she  is  using  him  as  a  sounding  board  to 
try  her  latest  song;  he  feels  he  is  being  lectured; 
and  if,  as  is  often  the  case,  she  changes  the  subject 
at  frequent  intervals,  he  fears  he  is  being  jabbed. 
As  a  rule,  he  therefore  dislikes  that  type  and  is 
thankful  when  he  escapes  to  the  American  girl. 
Unfortunately,  the  American  girl  seems  to  expect 
him  to  play  golf  and  tennis,  to  swim  and  climb 
trees  in  a  single  morning,  so  the  vitality  of  the 
American  feminine  rather  worries  him. 

What  worries  him  particularly  in  the  American 
woman  is  the  presence  of  this  active,  prehensile 


140  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

mind  within  an  attractive  form.  He  meets  a 
woman  in  the  middle  twenties;  she  has  a  clear, 
beautiful  skin;  she  is  well  manicured;  she  wears  an 
attractive  frock  of  chiffon,  which  is  not  crumpled; 
she  is  a  woman  with  whom  he  feels  he  ought  to 
exchange  some  sentimentalities,  this  being  the 
thing  to  do.  Only  he  does  not  know  how  to  begin. 
She  is  too  serious,  too  interested;  she  seems  too 
aloof  from  these  natural  things.  If  he  is  strongly 
attracted,  he  considers  with  a  certain  misery  that 
these  well-cut  lips  are  wasting  their  time  in  dis- 
cussing psychoanalysis  and  that  he  might  find 
them  better  employment — if  only  he  knew  what 
to  do.  Should  he,  he  wonders,  begin  by  an  epigram 
out  of  Bernard  Shaw  ?  He  asks  the  American  man, 
who,  he  naturally  concludes,  knows  something  of 
the  emotional  temperament  of  his  countrywomen. 
The  American  man,  if  that  day  he  is  in  a  cynical 
mood,  instead  of  his  normal  state  of  rhapsody,  gives 
him  advice  which  I  cannot  reproduce  here,  and 
the  Englishman  sadly  shakes  his  head  and  walks 
away. 

The  difficulty  of  the  European  is  that  he  gen- 
erally looks  upon  sex  attraction  as  the  basis  of  all 
relations  between  men  and  women.  To  a  great 
extent  he  is  right,  in  this  sense  that  between  every 
man  and  every  woman  who  like  each  other  at  all 
there  is  at  least  a  streak  of  that  attraction.     But 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  141 

while  the  European  is  accustomed  to  viewing  that 
streak  through  a  microscope,  in  America  he  has  to 
use  a  telescope.  So  he  flounders  in  Bergson,  and 
tries  to  discuss  pragmatism;  he  tries  to  get  back  to 
the  firm  ground  of  his  intersexual  concept.  Some- 
times, when  he  plunges  and  induces  the  woman  to 
talk  of  love,  his  trouble  increases,  because  he  finds 
the  intellectual  American  woman  inclined  to  look 
upon  love  as  something  between  a  sacrament  and 
a  laboratory  test.  He  encounters  a  high  idealism 
about  "the  Divinity  of  Sex,"  which  seems  to  him 
as  fantastic  as  it  is  cosmic.  He  is  told  that  love  is 
not  so  simple  as  the  symbolic  holding  of  hands. 
It  must  be  dosed  and  analyzed  before  practice;  it 
must  be  organized  into  a  conjugal  eucharist,  pre- 
pared for,  practiced  on  the  appointed  day,  certified 
by  Doctor  Freud  as  well  as  by  Mr.  Pussyfoot  John- 
son. The  Englishman  becomes  horrified;  he  is  in 
the  middle  of  things  he  cannot  understand.  The 
native  kisses  knew  less  complexity;  there  was  less 
sense  of  national  welfare  in  his  embraces  of  yore. 
It  is  only  by  degrees  that  he  grasps  that  the  passion 
of  two  individuals  is  not  an  intimate  thing.  All 
his  life  he  has  been  making  a  mistake  about  that. 
He  begins  to  realize  that  the  people  he  calls  lovers 
are  merely  delegates  of  the  race;  he  conceives  it  as 
possible  that  in  days  to  come  they  may  be  duly 
elected  (for  three  years  of  the  duration  of  the 


i42  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

boon  in  divorce)  by  a  jury  of  matrons.  So  he 
flounders  among  the  latest  theories  of  psychiatry 
and  the  newest  statistics  of  the  congenitally  blind 
until  at  last  he  struggles  on  to  the  firm,  safe  old 
English  ground  of  commonplace  and  says,  "Yes, 
I  see;  one  must  not  be  selfish."  To  which  he  re- 
ceives as  a  reply,  "The  sex  relation  must  be  ego- 
phobocentric." 

All  this,  of  course,  is  on  the  surface;  I  develop 
this  aspect  only  because  the  visiting  Englishman  is 
so  easily  deceived  by  that  surface.  What  he  does 
not  understand,  until  he  takes  trouble,  is  that  the 
new  and  swift  education  of  the  American  woman 
is  responsible  for  a  certain  rawness  in  her  culture. 
What  has  happened  is  that,  within  half  a  century, 
the  American  woman  has  acquired  more  informa- 
tion, considered  more  ideas,  than  she  could  assimi- 
late in  thrice  the  time.  Skyscrapers  are  built  at  the 
rate  of  a  floor  a  week;  an  attempt  has  uncon- 
sciously been  made  by  the  American  woman  to 
construct  her  mind  at  that  pace.  But  it  is  not  so 
easy  to  modify  the  mind  as  to  hasten  the  laying  of 
the  inanimate  brick.  An  idea  planted  in  a  mind  is 
not  inanimate.  It  is  a  thing  that  develops  into  a 
sometimes  quite  unexpected  form.  An  idea  which 
was  planted  for  a  lily  often  turns  out,  when  full 
grown,  to  be  a  hollyhock;  and  another  lily  may 
produce,  not  a  hollyhock,  but  a  chrysanthemum. 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  143 

The  result  is  that,  having  started  with  a  perfectly 
orderly  bed  of  lilies,  put  in  a  little  hurriedly,  with- 
out thorough  examination  of  the  bulbs,  the  ulti- 
mate result  is  a  garden  in  a  state  of  some  disorder 
in  which,  human  nature  being  what  it  is,  grow 
a  certain  number  of  weeds. 

This  metaphor  should  not  be  taken  as  an  attack, 
for  it  is  better  to  plant  rather  at  random  than  not 
to  plant  at  all,  but  I  think  it  explains  what  I  mean 
— that  the  intellectual  ambition  of  the  American 
woman  has  proved  so  swift,  so  greedy,  so  magnif- 
icently open  to  the  newest  things,  that  it  would  be 
unreasonable  to  expect  it  to  produce  everywhere 
an  entirely  balanced  state  of  mind.  The  American 
woman  is  making  intellectual  experiments.  Al- 
ready she  is  ahead  of  the  European  in  variety  of 
product.  As  time  goes  on,  she  may  be  less  anxious 
to  seek  novelty  and  prove  more  inclined  to  proceed 
with  the  ordering  and  qualification  of  her  pres- 
ent collection.  Meanwhile,  she  is  on  the  right 
road  from  the  point  of  view  of  her  development. 
Whether  this  road  will  ultimately  lead  her  into 
cool  intellectuality,  whether  intellect  will  be  ab- 
sorbed for  the  strengthening  of  emotion,  is  im- 
possible to  say,  but  she  is  doing  one  great  thing — 
she  is  shaking  free  from  the  intellectual  stag- 
nation which  for  so  many  centuries  kept  her  so 
enslaved. 


144  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

Believing  as  I  do  that  in  fundamentals  such  as 
love  human  beings  change  very  slowly,  it  is  difficult 
to  generalize  on  the  love  emotion  in  the  United 
States.  It  is  impossible  and  untrue  to  say  that 
human  passions  are  in  America  more  developed  or 
less  developed  than  they  are  elsewhere.  That  is 
the  sort  of  thing  which  one  does  not  know.  But 
one  can  go  so  far  as  to  compare  two  nations  by 
saying  that  a  certain  type  (common  to  both)  is 
more  prevalent  in  one  race  than  in  the  other.  One 
encounters  frigid  Sicilians  and  fanciful  Swiss,  only 
one  does  not  encounter  them  very  often.  The 
Englishman  in  America  is  considerably  puzzled  as 
to  the  love  relations  of  the  inhabitants,  partly  be- 
cause climate  and  race  make  them  so  various, 
partly  because  they  are  abundantly  discussed  and 
therefore  obscured  by  words  and  expositions  of 
idealism.  Also,  he  comes  across  amusing  con- 
trasts. He  may  drift  into  a  radical  group  where, 
in  presence  of  several  people,  a  woman  will  say, 
"  I  am  suffering  from  sex  starvation."  On  the  other 
hand,  he  may  encounter  a  number  of  women  who 
declare  it  sinful  to  smoke  a  cigarette.  If,  as  he 
should,  he  makes  allowances  for  extremes,  he  is 
puzzled  by  the  public  behavior  of  men  and  women. 

One  case  that  occurs  to  me  is  that  of  a  couple 
whom  I  was  able  to  watch  unobserved.  The  man 
belonged  to  the  viveur  type;    the  woman  did  not 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  145 

look  unapproachable.  For  five  days  they  were 
continually  in  each  other's  company.  They  obvi- 
ously enjoyed  it,  to  the  exclusion  of  others.  Their 
conversations  were  continuous,  and  yet  I  never 
saw  between  them  the  slightest  familiarity,  even 
when  once,  by  accident,  I  came  across  them  in  a 
dark  garden;  they  were  sitting  well  apart,  talking, 
talking — as  if  there  were  something  in  this  idea 
that  comradeship  can  exist  between  woman  and 
man.  This  is  not  a  solitary  case.  American  men 
and  women  are  either  more  capable  of  purely 
mental  relations  than  are  Europeans;  or  they  are 
more  careful  to  conceal  what  may  lie  behind  the 
mental;  or  the  women  set  upon  themselves  such 
a  price  that  they  are  able  to  repel  familiarity.  It 
seems  to  me  that  one  of  these  three  solutions  must 
apply.  If  the  first  or  the  third  is  the  correct  one, 
this  must  mean  that  the  frigid  type  is  more  com- 
mon in  the  United  States  than  it  is  in  Europe.  One 
hesitates  to  conclude  in  a  manner  so  sweeping,  but 
the  behavior  of  couples  leads  one  rather  in  that 
direction. 

For  my  part,  I  suspect  that  the  impulses  of  the 
American  women,  though  much  the  same  as  those 
of  the  European  women,  are  to  a  certain  extent  in- 
hibited by  two  factors — the  materialistic  civiliza- 
tion and  the  survival  of  puritanism.  One  should 
not  underrate  the  effects  upon  the  feminine  tern- 


i46  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

perament  of  the  haste,  restlessness,  and  hectic 
intensity  of  American  life.  The  noise  of  the 
streets,  for  instance,  must  have  an  effect;  it  has 
even  been  suggested  to  me  that  the  rather  high 
voice  of  the  American  woman  is  due  to  the  effort 
she  must  make  to  dominate  the  surrounding 
sounds  of  traffic.  But  that  is  a  detail;  what  I  am 
thinking  of  is  that  the  effort  to  get  on,  to  make 
money,  to  enjoy  all  the  life  that  can  be  torn  from 
sleep,  is  likely  to  cause  mental  anaemia,  which  is 
unfavorable  to  emotional  indulgence.  Purity  can 
very  well  be  a  form  of  exhaustion;  one's  mind 
may  be  so  full  of  things  to  do,  appointments  to 
keep,  faces  to  remember;  one  may  be  so  over- 
worked, or  so  overplayed,  that  one  literally  has 
not  the  time  for  those  brooding  states  of  mind 
where  flourishes  the  impulse  to  emotion.  I  have 
the  impression  that  the  American  woman  of  the 
towns  is  generally  a  tired  woman;  she  goes  too  hard 
at  work  and  too  hard  at  play  to  have  energy  for 
the  dallyings  which  occupy  her  European  sisters. 

Before  touching  on  the  puritanic  question,  one 
must  remember  that  one  of  the  results  of  intense 
American  life,  of  its  need  for  pleasure,  is  the  need 
for  money.  The  American  man,  so  often  cynical, 
comes  more  and  more  to  look  upon  himself  as 
exploited  by  women,  and  this  whether  he  is  mar- 
ried or  single.    He  seems  to  discern  a  certain  hard- 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  147 

ness,  particularly  in  the  American  girl,  who  appre- 
ciates him  if  he  can  afford  to  give  her  a  good  time, 
to  present  her  with  the  many  things  which  she 
violently  desires.  Fairly  often,  in  the  magazines, 
I  find  stories  where  the  woman  is  shown  as  demand- 
ing of  man  more  than  he  can  afford,  and  these 
are  more  common  than  tales  of  male  selfishness. 
Briefly,  there  is  a  masculine  revolt  against  the 
privileges  gained  by  women  when  they  were  few. 
This  does  not  imply  hostile  criticism  on  my  part. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  quite  natural  that  a  young 
girl  should  desire  to  possess  things.  In  the  second 
place,  it  seems  to  be  a  national  custom  to  spoil 
the  American  girl.  It  is  not  so  much  a  question  of 
greed  as  a  question  of  habit;  if,  as  may  happen, 
the  American  girl  thinks  poorly  of  the  man  who 
does  not  take  her  to  the  theater  or  present  her  with 
candies,  she  is  only  expressing  what  the  European 
woman  would  feel  if  a  man  forgot  to  remove  his 
hat.  Briefly,  I  do  not  believe  that  the  mercenary 
instinct  goes  very  much  deeper  than  it  does  in 
Europe.  It  may  express  itself  more  flagrantly;  it 
is  more  brutal  to  call  a  husband  a  "meal  ticket" 
than  a  "good  match";  but  expression  is  nothing 
by  the  side  of  fact.  The  American  woman  is  often 
getting  what  the  European  would  like  to  get. 
Both  are  ready  to  make  concessions  to  obtain  these 
things,  and  both  of  them  will  concede  as  little  as 


i48  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

they  can,  which  Is  humanly  normal.  If  the  Amer- 
ican woman  "gets  away"  with  it,  while  the  Euro- 
pean seldom  does,  it  is  because  American  public 
opinion  is  prepared  to  let  her  "get  away"  with  it. 
Her  aspiration  to  money  arises  partly  from  the 
insecurity  of  American  life,  where  fortunes  are 
risked  and  jobs  insecure;  it  connects  with  the 
intoxication  of  swift-made  fortunes.  Her  demand 
for  a  good  time  is  the  obvious  reply  to  her  men's 
financial  Napoleonism.  She  is  in  no  sense  abnormal 
in  her  aspirations;  whether  she  is  inhibited  in  her 
responses  I  do  not  know. 

My  own  belief,  judging  from  a  number  of  in- 
quiries, is  that  no  sensible  essay  can  be  written  on 
this  subject  without  taking  into  account  the  tem- 
perament of  the  American  man.  After  all,  women 
are  what  men  make  them,  and  men  what  women 
make  them.  In  spite  of  the  life  lived  at  a  few 
smart  and  continental  holiday  resorts,  I  believe 
there  is  less  moral  slackness  among  educated  Amer- 
ican women  than  among  the  English  equivalent. 
The  tradition  of  the  country  is  against  it.  Mar- 
riage is  favored;  after  marriage,  either  the  house- 
hold cares  are  so  heavy,  or  the  social  pleasures  so 
whirling,  that  there  is  less  need  for  emotional 
stimulant  than  there  is  in  soberer  lands.  Lastly, 
the  American  divorce  law  makes  irregularity  un- 
necessary;   the  rich  man  and  the  poor  man  can, 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  149 

by  shifting  their  capital  or  their  labor  from  state 
to  state,  live  in  legal  free  love  by  means  of  frequent 
divorce.  Only  the  man  in  the  middle  is  tied  up. 
The  fact  that  last  year  there  were  two  hundred 
more  divorces  in  Chicago  alone  than  in  the  whole 
of  England  and  Wales  illustrates  what  I  mean  by 
legal  free  love.  In  all  this  the  American  man  ap- 
pears as  an  enigmatical  figure.  He  seems  to  me 
at  the  same  time  forward  and  backward.  He  is 
aggressive  to  women  in  trifling  ways,  but  seems  to 
hold  back  when  the  situation  grows  intense.  He 
will  use  a  chance  opportunity  in  an  elevator,  but 
will  not  create  one  in  the  street,  as  if  he  were  afraid 
of  something,  as  if  he  were  leashed.  To  a  certain 
extent  he  is  leashed  by  local  laws,  which  thrust 
upon  loose  men  financial  and  even  criminal  re- 
sponsibilities, which  appall  the  man  of  middle 
fortune.  In  the  very  rich  and  very  poor  ranks  of 
society  this  does  not  operate  so  much,  and  the 
newspapers  report  many  sex  crimes  and  misde- 
meanors. But  I  doubt  whether  it  is  the  law  makes 
this  change  in  manners;  as  a  rule  it  is  manners 
make  a  change  in  law.  I  suspect  that  the  women 
maintain  their  standard  by  establishing  moral 
ascendancy.  They  do  not  repel  attacks;  they  do 
not  have  to.  Thus  I  discern  less  coldness  than 
freedom  from  temptation.  If  they  are  tempted, 
it  is  so  far,  and  not  farther.     Hence,  the  surprise 


ISO  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

of  the  European  who  finds  advances  so  readily 
repelled.  The  woman  he  approaches  is  so  unac- 
customed to  such  advances  that  she  repels  him 
instinctively. 

This  may  to  a  certain  extent  have  modified  the 
temperament  of  the  American  woman;  being  in- 
sufficiently stimulated;  being  inflamed  with  desire 
for  clothes,  automobiles,  residence  in  the  best 
hotels — briefly,  money;  being  trained  to  believe 
that  all  will  be  given  her — she  may  have  lost  part 
of  her  capacity  for  giving.  She  may  have  become 
slightly  sterilized  from  the  emotional  point  of 
view;  the  wifely  tyranny  that  some  men  complain 
of  in  America  is  probably  traceable  to  that.  This 
tyranny  is  also  traceable  to  the  puritanism  which 
still  flickers  in  most  Americans,  completely  domi- 
nates certain  regions,  and  in  general  the  small 
towns.  I  mean  by  puritanism  not  so  much  prohi- 
bitions as  an  attitude  of  mind.  In  this  sense  it 
may  generally  be  said  that  the  American  tendency 
is  to  coat  with  a  film  of  impropriety  all  facts  and 
ideas  affecting  passion.  Though  radical  and  world- 
ling circles  express  themselves  freely,  most  Amer- 
ican intercourse  is  fettered.  Jokes  are  made 
against  the  married  relation,  but  they  are  seldom 
more  depraved  than  those  of  Mutt  and  Jeff;  there 
are  conversational  parallels  to  "Bringing  Up 
Father,"  . . .  but  it  is  seldom  suggested  that  Father 


THE  AMERICAN  WOMAN  151 

needs  bringing  up  from  the  point  of  view  of  fidelity. 
Indeed,  the  suppressions  are  so  intense  that  if  you 
look  down  a  list  of  divorces  filed  for  hearing,  you 
will  find  that  nearly  all  allege  failure  to  maintain, 
desertion,  or  cruelty.  When  adultery  exists,  the 
tendency  is  to  hush  it  up  if  other  causes  suffice  to 
justify  divorce.  I  doubt  whether  the  American 
woman  is  by  herself  responsible  for  this  state  of 
things;  all  over  the  world  man  appears  more  con- 
ventional than  woman,  and  there  is  no  reason  to 
think  that  the  American  woman  (much  as  she  likes 
to  think  so)  differs  so  greatly  from  her  sisters.  T  But 
I  suspect  that  the  suppressions  maintained  by  men 
are  so  maintained  because  American  men  seem  to 
feel  that  they  owe  respect  to  the  delicate  sensibili- 
ties they  attribute  to  their  women.  As  an  Amer- 
ican said  to  me,  "We  are  living  in  i860;  we  still 
think  that  the  ladies  are  brittle  and  should  be  car- 
ried about  on  velvet  pads."  Realizing,  uncon- 
sciously or  consciously,  the  practical  value  of  this 
respect,  it  may  be  suggested  that  the  American 
woman  encourages  it  by  merely  verbal  displays  of 
prudery;  in  other  words,  she  avails  herself  of  a 
favorable  condition  which  she  does  not  alone  bring 
about;  such  American  puritanism  as  exists  origi- 
nates largely  from  man. 

The  American  woman  generally  gives  her  sup- 
port to  this  puritanism,  which  is  natural  enough 


iS2  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

in  a  society  where  capitalism  alone  has  power, 
where  nearly  all  capital  is  vested  in  the  male,  and 
where  puritanism  enables  woman  to  make  capital 
out  of  purity.  She  has  an  interest  in  limiting  the 
normal  brutality  and  polygamous  instinct  of  man 
by  setting  up  taboos;  she  has  an  equal  interest  in 
imposing  upon  him  a  narrow  code  of  language,  sug- 
gestion, and  approach,  because  this  handicaps  the 
male  capitalist  in  his  contest  with  the  sexual 
capitalist.  From  woman's  point  of  view,  manners 
make  the  shield  that  shelters  morals.  The  situation 
appears  curious  only  when  we  consider  the  intel- 
lectual grade  of  the  women  who  maintain  the  hard 
moral  standard  for  others  and  possibly  themselves. 
While  they  proclaim  their  contempt  for  wiles,  they 
remember  to  bewitch;  they  profess  aversion  from 
male  rule,  and  demonstrate  only  to  the  extent  of 
refusing  to  wear  a  wedding  ring;  they  proclaim 
themselves  free,  and  yet  do  not  reject  gifts.  It 
sounds  puzzling,  like  all  female  problems  when 
frankly  stated.  But,  like  all  female  problems,  it 
is  simple  enough,  and  sums  itself  in  the  old  human 
desire  to  have  the  cake  and  eat  it;  more  than  any 
other  the  American  woman  seems  able  to  do  this. 


V 

MEGAPOLIS  .SOUTHWARD 

1MAY  offend  a  Londoner  by  giving  this  name  of 
Megapolis  to  New  York.  For  London,  with  its 
population  of  seven  and  half  millions,  lays  claim  to 
the  title  of  "The  Great  City."  It  is  true  that  New 
York  itself  has  a  population  of  little  over  five  and  a 
half  millions,  and  that  even  if  we  add  the  surround- 
ing territory  of  Yonkers,  Mount  Vernon,  Jersey 
City,  Newark,  etc.,  the  total  might  be  less  than 
that  of  London;  but  New  York  is  a  city  great  not 
only  in  area;  it  is  great  in  height,  in  spirit,  in 
emotion.  I  find  it  infinitely  sympathetic,  endowed 
with  much  of  the  grace  of  Paris,  but  more  magnifi- 
cent. Magnificence  is  the  first  thing  that  strikes 
one  in  New  York.  Its  great  buildings,  its  spreading 
luxury,  its  lights,  its  air  of  skeptical  pleasure,  its 
moral  anaesthesia,  of  cool  ferocity,  all  that  suggests 
republican  Rome  with  a  touch  of  Babylon. 

I  love  New  York.  I  think  I  understand  it.  It 
is  in  America  the  only  female  city,  a  city  of  cyni- 
cism and  of  lace,  a  more  intense  Paris,  a  Vienna 
disguised  in  the  garments  of  respectability.     It  is 


iS4  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

all  the  cities.  Where  Chicago  offers  energy,  New 
York  offers  splendor.  It  is  the  only  American  city 
where  people  work  and  play;  in  the  others  they 
work.  I  feel  that  inevitably  in  the  second  genera- 
tion, if  not  in  the  first,  the  oil  and  cotton  of  the 
South,  the  wheat  of  the  Middle  West,  come  to  fuse 
themselves  in  the  crucible  of  pleasure  that  lies  on 
the  Hudson. 

Perhaps  that  is  why  most  of  the  other  cities  call 
New  York  degenerate,  because  it  is  not  so  much 
an  industrial  city  as  a  city  of  commerce,  a  city  of 
financiers,  and  a  place  which  people  desert  on 
Saturday  mornings  to  play  golf.  That  is  not  degen- 
eracy. Indeed,  to  me,  New  York  is  the  contrary — 
it  is  regenerate;  it  is  the  microcosm  of  the  new 
civilization  of  America,  of  which  the  Middle  West  is 
the  basis  and  the  South  the  memory. 

The  colossal  scale  of  New  York  naturally  makes 
upon  the  stranger  his  first  important  impression. 
The  American  does  not  realize  what  a  shock  New 
York  can  be  to  a  European  who  has  never  before 
seen  a  building  higher  than  ten  floors;  the  effect  is 
bewildering.  The  monster  hotel  where  the  stranger 
makes  his  first  acquaintance  with  America  is  itself 
a  shock.  I  began  in  a  hotel  which  seems  to  have 
two  thousand  bedrooms  and  to  carry  a  rent  roll 
of  #20,000  a  day.  In  other  words,  this  is  Brob- 
dingnag,  the  land  of  the  giants.    Gigantic  chaos, 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  155 

that  is  the  first  feeling  I  had  in  New  York.  Differ- 
ences forced  themselves  upon  me.  I  missed  the 
public  houses  of  England  and  the  cafes  of  the 
Continent.  (The  soda  cafes,  where  so  few  people 
sit  down,  did  not  seem  to  correspond.)  Fifth 
Avenue,  people  so  many,  traffic  so  thick  that  one 
has  to  take  one's  turn  at  a  crossing,  that  police 
control  has  become  mechanical,  beyond  the  power 
of  man.  Then  one  goes  into  a  store;  one  wanders 
through  endlesc  departments,  on  endless  floors,  one 
goes  through  tunnels  and  never  comes  out  by  the 
same  block  as  one  went  in.  There  is  so  much  in 
the  streets;  everything  hurries — motor  cars,  street 
cars,  railway  cars.  In  the  restaurants  endless  vistas 
of  napery  and  crystal  extend  away.  One  goes  up 
Broadway  at  night  to  see  the  crowded  colored  signs 
of  the  movie  shows  and  the  theaters  twinkle  and 
eddy,  inviting,  clamorous,  Babylonian!  You  see, 
all  the  great  cities  of  the  present  and  the  past  come 
into  my  mind  and  make  my  judgment  fantastic. 
For  New  York  is  all  the  cities.  It  is  the  giant  city 
grouped  about  its  colossal  forest  of  parallelepipeds 
of  concrete  and  steel.  One  can't  find  one's  way. 
The  plan  of  the  city  is  simple,  but  it  is  so  large 
and  hangs  so  heavily  over  you  that  you  become 
dazed.  You  can't  find  the  news  stand  in  the  mar- 
ble lounge;  the  pages  whom  you  sent  on  a  message 
do  not  come  back,  but  fade  in  the  distance,  grow 


i56  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

old  and  die  in  a  distant  region,  perchance  to  be 
buried  under  leaves.  It  is  such  a  little  thing,  a 
page  boy,  in  Brobdingnag!  He  is  so  much  below 
scale.  Such  a  scale!  They  brought  me  a  telephone 
message  the  first  day.  It  comprised  twenty-two 
words  and  was  written  on  a  sheet  of  paper  three 
feet  four  inches  long.  Here  indeed  is  the  toy  of  a 
giant.  It  is  only  little  by  little,  as  you  grow  used 
to  this  enormity,  that  you  reach  comfort  in  New 
York,  that  you  look  casually  at  the  Equitable 
Building,  and  contemptuously  at  the  little  apart- 
ment houses  of  eight  floors.  Also,  you  discover 
with  relief  that  in  New  York  any  fool  can  find  his 
way,  unless  he  goes  south  of  Washington  Square. 
Later  on,  new  troubles  come,  for  one  street  looks 
like  the  other  and  you  cannot  remember  numbers. 
It  is  only  by  degrees  that  streets  acquire  per- 
sonality in  your  mind. 

You  come  to  know  that  on  East  Forty-second 
stands  a  railway  station;  that  in  Fourteenth  Street 
you  may  buy  "Louis-the-XIVth-Street  furniture," 
as  a  New  York  nut  has  put  it ;  that  West  Fortieth 
runs  south  of  Bryant  Square,  while  West  Fifty- 
ninth  marks  the  beginning  of  Central  Park. 
Broadway  worries  you  a  lot.  It  is  always  turning 
up  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  town;  you  resent  its 
irregularity;  you  are  becoming  an  American. 

Standing  by  the  building  plot  between  Vander- 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  157 

bilt  and  Park  Avenues,  and  looking  westward,  you 
see  a  strange  thing — an  enormous  office  building 
against  the  back  of  which  outlines  itself  the  spire  of 
a  church.  A  big  office  and  a  little  church;  what 
a  change  since  the  Middle  Ages!  And  the  little 
New  York  church  is  vigorously,  resolutely  Gothic. 
They  nearly  all  are,  in  New  York,  as  they  are 
elsewhere.  Even  in  Fifth  Avenue,  vast  erections 
of  stone  are  fretted  into  trefoil  and  cinquefoil, 
garnished  with  finials  and  gargoyles,  spired  and 
flying  buttressed,  as  if  Chartres  and  Canterbury 
had  crossed  the  ocean.  It  is  tragic.  Nothing  is 
more  beautiful  than  the  American  grain  elevator, 
and  nothing  seems  so  absurd  as  the  American 
Gothic  church.  I  know  the  English  are  just  the 
same.  They,  too,  erect  Gothic  churches;  I  have 
even  seen  a  chapel  made  of  galvanized  iron  fitted 
with  an  ogival  window,  but  that  is  Europe,  tradi- 
tional Old  Europe,  not  modern  America. 

One  might  have  expected  America  to  realize  that 
Christianity  existed  before  Gothic  architecture,  and 
that  there  is  no  association  between  the  two. 
America  might  have  escaped  from  the  thrall.  This 
mechanical,  conventional,  worn-out  Gothic,  how 
disgusting,  how  outrageous  it  is  to  see  it  go  up 
to-day!  What  wooden  feeling  that  reveals!  What 
lack  of  freshness,  lack  of  courage !  And  to  think 
that  this  rag  doll  of  the  ages  should  inhabit  Brob- 


158  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

dingnag!  that  Gothic — this  ecclesiastical  ready-to- 
wear — should  be  accepted  in  the  country  which  is 
to-day  the  sole  possessor  of  a  new  architecture! 

In  Europe  architecture  died  in  i860,  when  the 
great  Georgian  style  had  given  way  to  the  porticoes 
and  columns  of  Victoria,  and  to  the  barracks  of 
Baron  Hausmann.  Then  creation  ceased.  Of  late 
years  the  English  history  of  architecture,  particu- 
larly in  domestic  work,  is  a  horrible  orgy  of  mongrel 
Elizabethan  and  incoherent  Renaissance;  in  Ger- 
many originality  suffered  delirium  tremens  in  the 
suburbs  of  Munich,  where  one  could  see  plump  and 
peaceful  German  families  taking  their  coffee  in 
Chinese-pagoda  villas.  Then  came  America  and 
ferro-concrete.  America  discovered  the  natural  use 
of  the  new  material,  and  she  discovered  height. 
Americans  have  often  told  me  that  I  am  wrong; 
they  argue  that  the  origin  of  the  skyscraper  is  to  be 
found  in  the  small  size  of  Manhattan  and  the  cost 
of  land.  That  is  not  true,  for  the  skyscraper  is  not 
confined  to  Manhattan.  You  find  it  in  Boston, 
Chicago,  even  in  Oklahoma,  where  land  was  not 
worth  a  nickel  a  foot.  The  truth  is  that  American 
architects,  who  went  for  their  training  to  Paris, 
had  the  fit  of  exaltation  which  in  other  times  pro- 
duced the  great  styles.  That  is  how  they  made 
the  style  of  the  present,  and  it  is  magnificent. 
Some  of  the  tall  buildings  are  bad,  some  good.  The 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  159 

architect  has  not  everywhere  equaled  his  dream, 
but  in  general  he  has  all  the  time  kept  a  firm  hold 
on  utility,  the  only  safe  companion  for  the  man 
who  builds.  He  has  wasted  no  time  and  no  money 
on  the  scrolls  and  garlands  which  disfigure  English 
building;  he  has  not  broken  up  his  noble  columns 
with  irrelevant  stone  cubes.  He  has  used  no  col- 
umns at  all  except  to  support  something.  So  far 
as  possible  (that  is,  after  compromising  with  the 
demand  for  plate-glass  ground  floors),  he  has  made 
honest  use  of  his  material.  And  so,  by  long  lines, 
by  avoiding  fret,  he  has  produced  nobility.  The 
Woolworth,  the  Wurlitzer,  its  neighbor  the  Bush 
Terminal — all  these,  though  rather  elaborate,  are 
clean-lined  and  good.  Lit  up  at  night,  the  Bush 
Terminal  is  a  fairy  castle  in  the  air.  The  Com- 
modore Hotel  is  perhaps  the  most  magnificent  of 
all  because  it  is  less  narrow,  has  more  dignity,  and 
because  its  use  of  two  materials  is  light  and  gay. 

You  find  them  all  over  the  town,  these  landmarks 
of  the  new  builders.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Flatiron,  the  failure  is  horrible.  At  other 
times  the  result  is  dull,  but  in  the  main  they 
make  New  York  into  a  city  of  columns  which 
support  the  sky.  They  mean  something  in  terms 
of  aspiration.  It  is  not  business  alone  which  piles 
brick  upon  brick  so  fast  opposite  my  window  that 
every  week  a  complete  floor  is  built.     Business 


160  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

thinks  that  it  hires  the  architect,  just  as  it  thinks 
that  it  tolerates  the  poet,  but  the  architect  and 
the  poet  know  better.  In  matters  of  art  they 
always  come  through.  The  business  men  are  too 
busy  to  watch  over  their  own  version  of  beauty; 
so  the  artist  comes  in  and  imposes  his  own. 

Height  is  the  new  destination  of  American  archi- 
tecture. Even  in  the  distant  suburbs  of  Manhat- 
tan— at  High  Bridge,  for  instance — the  twelve- 
floor  building  is  there,  and  the  cottage  is  not.  The 
center  of  old  respectable  Manhattan  can  still  be 
seen  in  Murray  Hill,  in  Madison  Avenue,  but 
here,  too,  height  will  ultimately  prevail.  You  are 
very  conscious  of  this  tendency  in  the  Mayfair 
of  Manhattan,  round  about  East  Sixtieth  Street. 
The  private  houses  are  opulent,  but  their  style  is 
fretful  and  inferior  to  that  of  the  office  buildings. 
You  can  see  that  here  money  has  toyed  at  leisure 
instead  of  wearying  of  design,  as  it  has  in  Wall 
Street,  and  giving  over  the  work  to  the  architect. 
Here  are  marble  medallions,  unnecessary  pillars, 
slim,  wrought-iron  gates.  You  can  imagine  the 
rich  woman  who  hunted  the  architect;  you  guess 
the  husband  away  from  home,  indulging  in  fren- 
zied finance.  This  feeling  is  continued  in  a  less 
emphatic  way  in  the  district  of  Murray  Hill,  where 
the  old  predominates  for  a  while. 

In  general,  the  private  house  is  excessive  in  de- 


MEGAPOLIS   SOUTHWARD  161 

sign.  Here  and  there  a  white-stone  face  shines 
fine  and  pure,  but  few  private  buildings  in  New 
York  are  equal  to  the  big  apartment  houses,  such 
as  those  of  Park  Avenue  and  Madison  Avenue, 
which  are  square  and  logical.  The  American  builds 
best  when  he  builds  high,  but  he  must  go  all  the 
way.  His  occasional  failures  appear  in  the  houses 
of  four  or  five  floors.  The  effect  is  not  narrow 
enough  for  him.  Height  and  narrowness  are  essen- 
tial to  his  new  genius.  It  is  curious  to  see  the  new 
products  by  the  side  of  the  old  brick  houses,  col- 
ored with  terra  cotta,  which,  once  upon  a  time, 
the  rich  people  from  downtown  built  near  Thirty- 
fifth  Street,  to  escape  Manhattan.  But  Manhattan 
got  them  all  the  same. 

I  wonder  what  would  have  happened  to  Man- 
hattan if  the  building  law  had  not  interfered;  a 
time  would  have  come  when  from  the  Battery  to 
Forty-fifth  Street  the  whole  of  the  island  would 
have  been  covered  with  thirty-story  buildings.  The 
lower  floors  would  never  have  seen  the  sun,  and 
great  hurricanes  would  have  blown  from  the  East 
River  to  the  Hudson  through  the  devil's  corridors. 
It  would  have  been  epic.  Now  the  buildings  are  set 
back  in  their  upper  floors;  it  is  still  fine,  because  it 
is  big,  but  it  is  losing  the  nobility  of  the  sheer 
facade.  The  new  laws  have  saved  Old  New  York 
for  better  or  for  worse.     Probably  for  worse,  as 


162  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

Old  New  York  is  an  empty  thing  and  the  shade  of 
Peter  Stuyvesant  a  ghost  out  of  place.  But  no 
doubt  the  old  houses  on  West  Twenty-third  Street, 
near  the  ferry,  the  dignity  of  Murray  Hill,  and  the 
disdain  of  Washington  Square  sniffing  at  Green- 
wich Village,  will  for  a  while  be  maintained.  The 
little  dancing  places  off  Broadway,  the  few  places 
where  one  may  meet  a  few  mild-looking  "toughs," 
will  also  long  stand  out  against  the  vast  and  re- 
spectable pleasure  halls  of  the  democracy. 

I  have  wandered  a  great  deal  about  New  York. 
A  city  which  had  not  its  cosmopolitan  population, 
and  therefore  its  variety  of  impression,  would  be 
wearisome  because  the  streets  are  so  much  alike, 
except  a  few  of  the  main  streets.  You  can  always 
recognize  Broadway,  pursuing  commerce  and  pleas- 
ure; Fifth  Avenue,  opulent  and  a  little  superior, 
just  as  you  know  where  you  are  in  St.  Mark's 
Place,  by  the  aristocratic  old  church;  again  in  the 
pleasant,  economical  Bronx,  in  tumultuous  Wall 
Street,  you  know  where  you  are.  But  the  difference 
between,  shall  we  say,  East  Forty-sixth  and  East 
Forty-seventh  is  nothing.  No  unexpected  angles, 
no  London  oddities  of  palace  and  hovel  fix  your 
eye.  Differences  of  wealth  alone  make  a  differ- 
ence of  impression,  and  these  grade  down  so  slowly, 
particularly  in  the  eastern  side  of  town,  that  the 
change  of  feeling  is  infinitesimal. 


MEGAPOLIS   SOUTHWARD  163 

To  perceive  a  strong  impression  in  New  York 
you  must  go  to  Greenwich  Village  or  to  the  East 
Side.  I  did  not  go  very  much  into  Greenwich  Vil- 
lage. I  felt  that  it  would  be  too  similar  in  spirit  to 
our  English  Chelsea.  I  was  afraid  to  meet  painters 
and  writers,  because  all  over  the  world  they  ex- 
hibit much  the  same  vices,  virtues,  and  views. 
They  are  international  before  they  are  national. 
The  stockbroker  is  more  significant.  Still,  I  have 
known  the  admirable  cooking  of  "The  Good 
Intent/'  come  within  the  radius  of  the  Province- 
town  Players,  consumed  coffee  and  ideas  under  the 
sinister  glow  of  revolutionary  candles  in  a  room 
that  had  never  been  cleaned.  Amusing.  Amusing 
rather  like  the  "  Petit  Trianon,"  where  Marie  An- 
toinette milked  the  cows  and  made  butter.  In 
Greenwich  Village  the  decoration  of  art  was  too 
heavy  for  the  art;  I  felt  that  what  I  saw  there  I 
did  not  really  see,  and  that  the  real  work  was  being 
done  quietly  elsewhere. 

It  is  very  different  on  the  East  Side.  The  thing 
that  strikes  the  foreigner  first  is  that  the  New  York 
poor  live  in  houses  externally  of  the  same  type  as 
those  of  the  middle  class,  the  same  height,  same 
balconies;  only  the  decoration  of  washing  that 
hangs  out  to  dry.  The  crowding  children  on  the 
street  and  the  fury  of  activity  revealed  by  the  shops 
located  in  cellars,  by  degrees  impose  themselves, 


i64  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

also  the  great  number  of  fruit  and  vegetable  stalls 
in  the  side  streets.  It  sorts  itself  out  by  and  by. 
One  observes  that  among  the  twenty  or  thirty  chil- 
dren on  the  doorsteps  appears  a  variety  of  national 
types;  one  notices  the  mothers  shawled  and  seated 
on  those  steps,  talking,  sewing,  or  watching  without 
excitement  the  rows  of  babies  in  their  little  car- 
riages. One  sees  that  here  are  no  big  stores,  be- 
cause there  are  no  big  purses,  and  one  is  tempted  to 
say  that  these  tall  tenements  are  not  so  gloomy 
as  the  low  black  houses  of  the  London  East  End. 
The  children  make  an  impression  of  prosperity  be- 
cause they  are,  on  the  whole,  infinitely  better  kept 
and  some  of  them  better  fed  than  the  children  of 
the  English  poor. 

The  East  Side  carries  itself  off  by  a  touch  of  the 
picturesque.  Its  division  into  national  streets  en- 
courages the  stranger.  He  is  surprised  to  find  a 
Greek  street,  a  Spanish  street,  a  great  block  of 
Italian  streets,  but  he  is  disappointed  in  China- 
town. Oh,  what  a  come-down  after  the  lyrical 
stories  of  the  magazines !  This  little  cluster  about 
Doyer  Street,  Pell  and  Mott  Streets,  at  the  end  of 
the  Bowery;  just  a  few  signs  in  Chinese,  a  little 
pottery,  some  lychee,  the  Chinese  Joss  House,  that 
is  all.  It  is  mercantile  instead  of  being  sinister. 
The  opium  den  has  removed  uptown,  and  naught 
remains  of  the  East  save  here  and  there  a  Chinese 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  165 

child,  comic  and  touching  in  mauve-flannel  trou- 
sers. One  does  not  feel  the  poverty  of  the  East 
Side,  even  when  one  enters  the  tenements.  Here, 
indeed,  New  York  is  not  outdistanced  by  London 
itself.  They  are  horrible.  Originally  built  for  one 
family,  the  New  York  tenement  now  houses  a 
dozen  in  a  room;  sexes  herded  together  among  the 
cooking,  the  laundry,  and  presumably  ablutions; 
broken  windows,  leaky  roofs,  no  plumbing,  stairs 
thick  with  dirt  and  vermin.  It  would  be  tragic  if 
I  did  not  feel  that  in  this  great  country  that  has 
work  enough  for  all,  the  East  Side  is  merely  the 
clearing  station  of  the  New  World.  This  man,  who 
lives  with  two  families  in  a  room,  is  earning  only 
enough  to  keep  alive,  but  he  is  refusing  himself 
liquor,  movies,  tobacco;  his  wet  clothes  dry  on 
his  body  because  he  will  not  buy  another  suit;  he 
is  saving.  Soon  he  will  get  a  better  job,  will  save 
some  more,  find  a  partner,  set  up  for  himself.  He 
will  move  to  150th  Street  or  so.  He  may  succeed 
and,  street  by  street,  move  downtown  until  he,  or 
his  son — it  matters  little — enters  the  charmed  circle 
of  Central  Park.  On  the  way  many  must  fall,  many 
must  die,  but  very  few  stay.  The  East  Side  is  a 
passage.  The  poor  of  America  are  not  like  those 
of  Europe,  locked  into  their  poverty,  whence  they 
cannot  escape  except  by  incredible  luck  or  amazing 

ability.    In  America,  even  the  poor  have  a  chance 
12 


166  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

with  the  future.  They  come,  speaking  strange 
tongues,  without  linen,  sometimes  without  friends, 
but  there  is  nothing  that  prevents  them,  no  national 
bar,  no  class  bar,  from  retaining  the  faculty  by 
which  man  lives,  which  is  hope.  In  America  every 
man  may  rise.  It  is  not  an  idle  dream  for  an 
East  Side  child  to  tell  himself  that  he  will  become 
one  of  the  masters  of  America.  It  may  not  be  a 
lofty  dream;  it  means  greed  and  grab,  but  it  is  a 
dream,  and  dreams  are  the  stuff  that  worlds  are 
made  of. 

You  can  see  them  everywhere,  fleeting  in  their 
large  automobiles,  and  stopping  from  time  to  time 
to  spend  some  money  at  a  hotel,  a  shop.  In  New 
York  they  oppress  you  less  than  they  do  in  London, 
because  in  America  so  many  own  automobiles. 
People  mortgage  their  houses  to  buy  automobiles. 
So  it  is  not  locomotion  only  indicates  wealth,  in  a 
country  where  automobiles  belong  to  a  class  which 
in  Europe  could  not  afford  to  ride  in  a  taxi.  Nor 
is  it  clothes.  The  man  who  has  made  his  money 
in  the  West  or  the  Southwest  does  not,  when  he 
appears  in  the  lounge  of  a  large  hotel,  make  the 
effect,  half  smart,  half  vulgar,  of  the  European 
nouveau  riche.  He  buys  his  clothes  in  the  town 
where  he  made  his  money;  he  breaks  out  now  and 
then  only  through  a  diamond  ring,  bought  in  a  fit 
of  desire,  and  worn  on  a  short,  heavy  finger.   Also 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  167 

he  dislikes  dressing  for  dinner.  It  worries  him.  He 
would  like  to  take  his  coat  off,  but  his  wife  won't 
let  him;  on  the  other  hand,  he  wishes  that  she 
would  not  take  her  clothes  off,  but  he  can't  stop 
her.  A  common  sight  in  the  very  expensive  places 
of  New  York  is  a  youngish,  rough-looking  man  in 
a  day  suit,  dining  with  a  wife  dressed  in  the  Rue 
de  la  Paix,  in  clothes  to  which,  sometimes,  she 
adds  the  trimmings  of  Tipkinville. 

I  remember  such  a  couple.  It  was  very  late,  at 
a  show  after  the  theater.  I  could  see  in  the  glow 
of  his  eyes,  hear  in  the  echo  of  his  laugh,  that  he 
liked  being  up  so  late — so  different  from  the  night 
life  of  Tipkinville!  As  he  could  buy  nothing  to 
drink,  he  was  having  an  enormous  lot  to  eat.  The 
pate  de  foie  gras  had  been  detained  on  the  table,  to 
keep  ultimate  company  with  one  of  those  interest- 
ing sweets  made  out  of  an  ice  wrapped  up  in  a  hot 
omelet,  which  latter  is  inclosed  in  another  ice,  the 
result,  I  believe,  in  another  omelet,  and  so  on.  I 
think  he  had  ordered  a  cigar,  and  kept  the  box.  I 
was  a  little  sorry  for  him;  how  happy  he  would 
have  been  if  he  had  been  a  ruminant  with  four 
digestive  mechanisms  instead  of  one.  He  lay  back 
in  his  chair,  extended  thumbs  in  waistcoat  holes; 
his  intelligent  brown  eye  inspected  the  room,  as 
if  he  were  valuing  it.  He  was  at  ease.  He  was 
not  afraid,  as  are  the  European  nouveaux  riches. 


168  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

of  lacking  good  form.  He  was  It.  From  time  to 
time  he  glanced  contentedly  at  his  pleasant, 
healthy  wife,  who  looked  like  an  enormous  rose 
trying  to  escape  from  a  narrow  green  vase.  She 
was  not  so  comfortable.  (Perhaps  the  green  vase 
was  tight.)  She  was  peering  through  a  gold  lor- 
gnette studded  with  diamonds.  She  was  looking 
round  for  somebody  she  knew,  and  she  did  not 
know  anybody — yet.  But  as  I  observed  them,  so 
self-assured,  I  understood  that  they  would  know 
everybody — soon.  They  would  take  a  house  some- 
where near  East  Seventieth  Street;  buy  the  tapes- 
try ex-kings  have  to  sell,  a  rock-crystal  bath,  and 
one  of  the  beds  Queen  Elizabeth  slept  in.  She 
would  ride  in  Central  Park,  or  wherever  the  quality 
rides.  He  would  learn  golf  from  this  year's  cham- 
pion. They  would  buy  a  larger  car.  They  would 
join  a  country  club,  and  there  make  themselves 
popular  by  taking  down  to  the  members  cases  of 
whisky.  She  would  buy  at  sight  in  Fifth  Avenue, 
having  learned  that  she  could  not  buy  in  Broad- 
way. He  would  be  annoyed  by  not  being  admitted 
to  an  exclusive  club,  and  henceforth  respect  only 
that  one.  He  would  do  his  work  uncomfortably 
in  New  York,  and  from  time  to  time  dash  down  to 
Tipkinville,  ostensibly  to  look  after  things,  in  re- 
ality for  refreshment.  She  would  accompany  him 
only  for  a  few  days,  in  the  fall  and  the  spring, 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  169 

after  her  new  frocks  arrived.  She  would  not  need 
refreshment,  for  she  would  be  quaffing  the  wine  of 
life — lunch  parties,  tea  parties,  private  perform- 
ances by  Slovak  violinists;  Brazilian  dancers  and 
English  lecturers  would  lead  her  to  dress  for  lunch, 
dress  for  tea,  dress  for  dinner;  to  pass  from  the 
midday  band,  inspired  by  Irving  Berlin,  and  de- 
lightful, to  the  orchestra  of  the  afternoon,  inspired 
by  Vincent  dTndy  or  Debussy,  and  praiseworthy, 
to  the  dinner  band  and  more  Irving  Berlin,  to 
the  theater  and  fragments  of  "La  Boheme,"  to 
supper  and  more  Irving  Berlin,  to  the  midnight 
revel  under  the  aegis  of  Mr.  Ziegfeld,  and,  lest  the 
dawn  should  catch  her  idle,  to  the  dancing  club, 
where,  a  little  tired,  but  having  his  money's  worth, 
the  master  of  America  (but  not  of  his  wife)  would 
for  a  long  time  listen  to  Ruthenian  -  American 
music,  and  watch  her,  a  little  disquieted,  revolving 
in  the  arms  of  a  handsome  young  fellow  with 
waxed  hair.  Then  bed,  perhaps  to  sleep,  perchance 
to  dream  of  the  day,  hurrying,  similar  to  the  last, 
upon  the  heels  of  the  dying  day. 

In  other  words,  what  Zola  used  to  call  "La 
Curee"  of  which  there  is  no  exact  translation,  ex- 
cept perhaps  "pigs  in  clover/'  Only  they  are  not 
pigs,  but  rather  imitative  sheep,  full  of  desire,  and 
lost  in  fields  where  grow  strange  grasses. 

This  is  the  tragic  side  of  the  magnificent  Amer- 


170  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

ican  desire,  of  the  splendid  American  life  force, 
which  so  swiftly  has  enslaved  nature  and  raised  a 
broad  pasturage  which  no  Attila  can  trample.  And 
yet,  in  the  middle  of  all  this  folly,  America's  energy 
and  intelligence  survive.  The  man  is  still  keen, 
the  woman  is  still  austere;  they  do  not  decay, 
but  are  only  spectators  in  a  play  where  they  fancy 
they  have  a  part. 

They  do  represent  the  triumph  of  the  American 
mechanical  civilization.  You  see  that  in  their 
homes.  One  I  have  in  mind  is  amazing.  Imagine 
tall  iron  gates  opened  by  flunkies  uniformed  in 
gold,  whose  business  in  life  is  to  touch  a  button 
when  the  automobile  of  the  master  comes  into 
sight.  In  response  to  that  button,  in  the  dim  dis- 
tance of  the  expensive  house,  a  bath  begins  to  run; 
whisky  and  soda  is  set  out;  in  the  park  in  the  court- 
yard the  uniformed  officials  collect  their  flock  from 
the  private  swimming  bath  and  the  private  "gym." 
The  apartments  are  fairly  large,  ranging  from 
a  dozen  to  thirty  rooms.  You  can  have  an  ad- 
dress there  for  twenty  thousand  dollars  a  year, 
though  at  that  price  you  cannot  expect  to  be 
really  comfortable. 

I  am  not  laughing  at  this  luxury,  exactly;  it  is 
merely  the  extremity  of  the  American  character. 
The  American  is  not  understood  in  Europe,  where 
they  call  him  a  dollar  grabber.    So  he  is,  but  he  is 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  171 

seldom  mean,  even  avaricious;  he  is  also  a  dollar 
waster.  He  saves  only  when  he  needs  capital  to 
start  in  business.  When  he  makes  money  he  wants 
the  fullness  of  life  according  to  his  particular  lights, 
and  one  of  his  joys  is  immense  hospitality.  I  have 
met  many  a  hard  American,  but  not  one  mean 
one;  he  is  capable  of  fine  gestures  as  he  handles 
his  wealth.  In  the  main  he  devotes  it  to  what  one 
may  call  the  mechanical  civilization. 

There  is  no  place  in  America  where  one  obtains 
a  fuller  feeling  of  material  aspiration  than  at  the 
barber's.  In  Europe  we  get  our  hair  cut;  in 
America  we  linger  for  a  moment  on  the  threshold 
of  the  Mohammedan  paradise.  Here  are  whiteness, 
cleanliness,  light.  Here  are  thirty  assistants  in 
perfect  white  clothing.  Here  is  asepsis  as  far  as  it 
can  go;  germicide  soap  for  the  barber's  hands; 
sterilized  brushes  for  the  hair;  sterilized  brushes 
for  the  face.  And  after  the  shave!  Scented  oint- 
ments from  the  East;  perfumed  waters  of  recent 
origin,  and  the  witch-hazel  of  tradition;  hot  cloths 
and  hotter  cloths.  Forty  lotions  for  the  hair; 
shampoos  soapy,  or  oily,  or  alcoholic;  vibrators  for 
face  and  scalp;  tilting  chairs  to  make  a  dentist 
jealous.  You  are  scraped,  and  massaged,  and 
rubbed,  and  washed;  you  feel  smooth  like  a  cat 
being  stroked  .  .  .  and,   to  make   complete   the 


i72  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

sensation  of  attendance,  another  hireling  shines 
your  boots  into  mirrors,  while  a  houri  holds  your 
hands  with  rosy  fingers  and  makes  yours  such  as 
her  own.     Everything  is  done  that  can  be  done. 

It  may  seem  churlish  to  remark  that  after  all 
this  you  generally  find  that  you  have  been  given 
a  bad  shave  and  haircut,  price  two  or  three  dollars, 
and  that  your  large  tip  is  received  in  a  silence  that 
means:  "So  that's  the  sort  of  piker  you  are! 
We'll  remember  you."  That  is  the  interesting  part 
of  it;  the  barber  does  not  serve  you  well;  as  he 
works  he  hums  a  hymn  of  hate  and  ruffs  your  hair 
on  purpose;  he  is  rude,  casual,  and  incompetent. 
You  go  to  him  for  sensual  satisfaction,  and  it  is 
only  the  American  sense  of  propriety  prevents  the 
manicure  parlors  being  inclosed  with  curtains,  as 
they  are  in  the  notoriously  licentious  British  Isles. 

This  is  part  of  the  mechanical  civilization,  part 
of  the  desire  to  get  all  one  can  out  of  the  New 
World.  In  a  good  English  hotel  you  will  sometimes 
find  a  theater-ticket  office,  a  library,  and  even  a 
railway-ticket  office.  There  will  be  a  news  stand, 
a  valet,  and  perhaps  a  florist;  but  no  English  hotel 
will  supply  you  also  with  a  candy  store,  a  drug 
store,  a  notary  public,  a  doctor,  a  safe  deposit,  a 
stockbroker,  and  an  osteopath.  An  osteopath! 
Fancy  a  hotel  thinking  that  there  might  be  some- 
thing wrong  with  your  bones!    In  a  minor  summer 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  173 

hotel  in  New  Hampshire  a  lady  may  be  waved, 
which  she  will  fail  to  achieve  in  a  biggish  Scotch 
resort.  The  psychological  implication  of  this  pro- 
fuseness  seems  to  me  double — the  American  wants 
to  have  everything,  and  he  wants  it  when  he  wants 
it.  In  several  hotels  in  America  they  have  a 
night  shift  of  stenographers.  You  can  get  out  of 
bed  at  three  in  the  morning;  a  cool,  tidy  girl  will 
then  take  down  your  letters.  You  will  say,  "Who 
wants  to  dictate  at  three  in  the  morning  ?"  No- 
body; but,  in  America,  somebody  might  want  to. 
That  is  the  essence  of  mechanical  civilization,  to 
use  everything  you  have,  to  reduce  labor  by  ma- 
chinery and  methods;  and,  by  machinery  and 
methods,  to  increase  the  further  opportunities  for 
labor.  A  scientific  and  productive  ring,  but  it 
makes  one  rather  giddy.  There  are  amazing  in- 
stances of  its  products,  such  as  the  typewriter  that 
counts  its  own  words,  the  machine  that  sorts  index 
cards  according  to  contents,  the  autotelewriter, 
which  causes  your  handwriting  to  appear  in  another 
place  while  your  hand  is  moving.  Witchcraft ! 

I  have  enjoyed  nothing  more  in  America  than 
the  mechanical  civilization.  One  finds  it  every- 
where. One  finds  a  hint  of  it  in  the  New  York 
advertisements  which  offer  to  do  your  laundry  for 
twelve  cents  a  pound.  (Shorten  your  shirts  and 
keep  down  your  laundry  bill !)    There  is  something 


174  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

fresh  about  that;  there  is  something  fresh  in  all  the 
American  devices.  For  instance,  a  shoeblack, 
after  moistening  my  boots  with  liquid  blacking, 
dried  them  with  a  small  electric  fan.  I  don't  know 
that  this  dries  them  any  quicker  or  any  better 
than  the  wind,  but  I  like  the  mechanical  idea.  I 
like,  on  railway  platforms,  to  see  little  electric 
trucks  carry  the  luggage,  replacing  men  who  shout 
and  perspire.  If  this  is  excess,  it  is  in  the  right 
direction — namely,  toward  the  minimization  of 
effort.  The  United  States  has  done  more  in  this 
way  than  all  the  other  countries  put  together.  For 
instance,  the  electric  iron,  price  eight  dollars  or  so, 
which  is  fitted  to  a  light  plug  and  enables  the 
housewife  to  save  its  cost  in  a  month  by  doing  her 
own  ironing.  It  also  enables  the  poor  girl,  who  has 
only  one  good  skirt  and  two  decent  blouses,  to 
remain  smart.  The  iron  is  part  of  the  American 
home,  where  I  find  other  wonders — the  linen  chute, 
which  saves  the  handling  of  linen  and  precipitates 
it  into  the  linen  room;  the  electric  washer,  that 
big  drum  in  which  you  can  leave  your  linen  to 
swirl  among  soapsuds  and  think  no  more  about  it; 
the  electric  wringer,  which  saves  you  the  trouble 
of  squeezing  the  wet  linen,  and  which  is  so  deli- 
cate that  you  can  intrust  even  lace  to  it.  This 
civilization  is  extraordinary,  and  takes  extraor- 
dinary forms,  such  as  the  electric  curling  iron; 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  175 

the  immersion  heater,  which  enables  you  to  warm 
your  coffee  when  you  have  no  coffee  pot,  by  dipping 
a  stick  of  metal  direct  into  the  fluid;  and  even  the 
safety  comforter,  which  you  can  connect  with  a 
plug  and  lay  upon  any  part  of  yourself  which  aches. 
Everything  has  been  thought  of.  More  people,  in 
America,  are  thinking  of  how  to  make  life  easy 
than  anywhere  else.  They  will  cut  you  a  door  key 
while  you  wait,  just  as  they  will  build  a  floor  of 
your  office  in  a  week;  they  will  save  your  running 
downstairs,  or  taking  the  elevator,  by  providing 
a  Cutler  chute  to  mail  your  letters  at  your  bedroom 
door.  They  will  protect  your  shirts  at  the  laundry 
by  inserting  boards  and  clips,  and  they  will  save 
you  brown-paper  parcels  by  providing  laundry 
bags.  They  are  always  thinking  of  these  things. 
For  instance,  when  an  American  sells  you  an  eye 
lotion,  or  a  bottle  of  fountain-pen  ink,  somebody 
has  thought  of  the  use  of  these  liquids,  and,  instead 
of  making  you  buy  a  special  instrument,  or  letting 
you  forget  it,  has  fixed  a  dropper  to  the  cork.  It 
looks  like  nothing,  but  it  means  easier  living.  Also 
it  means  saving  labor.  The  plate  washer,  the 
rack  sunken  into  soapsuds  whirled  electrically,  is  a 
clever  machine.  But  what  strikes  one  is  that  the 
water  is  so  hot  that  nobody  need  wipe  the  plates. 
They  dry  of  themselves.  The  potato  peeler,  which 
rotates  the  vegetables  on  corundum  powder  and 


176  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

scrapes  them  clean,  is  a  clever  machine.  But  no 
one  need  clean  the  peel  out;  a  stream  of  water 
carries  it  away.  The  whole  idea  of  American  busi- 
ness seems  to  be  to  save  labor,  which  is  expensive, 
and  to  substitute  the  cheap  machine. 

I  must  note  that  America  wastes  paper  and  card- 
board in  the  most  extraordinary  way.  Any  Amer- 
ican newspaper  would  make  twelve  English  ones, 
while  the  laundry  board,  the  paper  cups  for  ice 
water,  all  this  is  drawing  on  the  raw  materials  of 
the  earth.  But  America  owns  so  much  of  the  raw 
materials,  and  gets  electricity  for  nothing.  It  is 
no  wonder  that  she  should  substitute  the  machine 
for  the  human  being.  In  spite  of  immigration 
America  has  never  had  too  much  human  labor  to 
spare.  In  the  home,  notably,  labor  is  scarce;  in- 
deed, the  servant  problem  is  one  of  the  first  things 
which  impresses  the  European.  It  is  a  peculiar 
problem,  for  there  are  servants  in  America,  but 
they  are  in  a  queer  state  of  mind.  The  men  are 
pretty  fair,  but  the  white  women  are  intolerable. 
They  are  inefficient,  unwilling,  dirty  workers,  gen- 
erally rude,  and  seem  to  suffer  under  a  sense  of 
intolerable  grievance  because  they  are  servants. 
They  seem  to  think  that  to  serve  is  to  lose  caste, 
which  is  to  a  certain  extent  true;  in  a  family  where 
one  girl  becomes  a  housemaid,  and  another  a  shop- 
girl,   the    shopgirl    thinks    more   of  herself,   and 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  177 

makes  her  sister  feel  it.  But  what  I  cannot  under- 
stand is  that  in  a  country  where  the  opportunities 
for  women  are  good,  anybody  should  become  a 
servant  if  he  or  she  feels  so  violently  against  it. 
And  they  do  feel  violently  against  it.  So  much  so 
that  you  seldom  find  a  young  housemaid;  as  a 
rule  she  is  elderly,  and  is  presumably  a  woman  who 
has  failed.  Young  ones  are  met  mainly  in  hotels, 
because  the  tips  are  high.  The  waiters  are  just 
as  bad.  I  like  everybody  in  America  except  the 
barbers  and  the  waiters.  In  these  America  pos- 
sesses a  class  of  whom  it  cannot  be  said  that  they 
also  serve;  they  merely  stand  and  wait. 

All  this  points  to  suppressed  furies.  The  re- 
sources of  America  are  so  vast,  the  exhibition  of 
wealth  is  so  intense,  that  those  who  are  not  rich 
seem  burned  up  in  a  furnace  of  hatred  and  envy. 
All  service,  all  subordination,  revolts  the  American; 
the  evidence  of  this  is  found  in  the  prices  paid  for 
domestic  labor.  The  European  is  amazed  to  find 
domestic  servants  paid  sixty  to  eighty  dollars  a 
month,  and  unobtainable  at  that;  to  hear  that  a 
temporary  lady's  maid  is  being  paid  seven  dollars 
a  day,  plus  board  and  lodging.  I  do  not  say  that 
they  should  not  be  well  paid — indeed,  eighty  dol- 
lars a  month  is  not  too  much  for  the  servant's  con- 
vict life — but  I  do  protest  against  the  ill  temper 
with  which  fair  wages  are  received. 


i78  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

The  effects  of  the  servant  problem  are  already- 
felt  in  the  American  home.  In  the  old  sense,  the 
American  home  is  disappearing  and  is  being  con- 
verted from  a  house  into  a  small  apartment  with 
a  kitchenette,  where  the  wife  does  most  of  the 
work,  assisted  once  a  week  by  a  charwoman  who 
earns  three  to  four  dollars  a  day.  I  discovered  a 
number  of  cases  which  seem  strange  to  an  English- 
man, among  women  whose  husbands  were  worth 
about  ten  thousand  dollars  a  year.  One  of  them 
runs  a  ten-roomed  house  and  four  children,  and 
does  all  the  cooking  herself,  assisted  once  a  week 
by  a  charwoman.  Another  one  struck,  and  went 
into  a  hotel,  breaking  up  the  home;  two  others  do 
all  the  work  of  four  rooms  and  the  cooking.  This 
is  an  uncomfortable  stage  in  the  transition  between 
the  old  home  and  the  new.  My  own  belief  is  that 
the  new  home  will  appear  in  America  first.  It  is 
already  there,  in  the  "efficiency  buildings" — one 
room  and  a  concealed  bed,  a  restaurant  below, 
a  common  nursery;  in  other  words,  everything 
handed  over  to  the  experts.  I  am  wholly  for  the 
new  type  of  home,  believing  it  is  folly  to  make 
every  woman  into  a  housekeeper,  whether  she  be 
fit  or  not.  But  I  cannot  help  seeing  that  the  transi- 
tion stage  is  having  annoying  effects. 

In  America  the  married  woman  is  enormously 
overworked.     She  practically  works  all  the  time, 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  179 

and  this  will  have  serious  effects  upon  her  culture. 
Before  the  war  the  American  wife  was  greatly- 
given  to  intellectual  interests.  Nowadays,  more 
and  more,  the  care  of  the  child  and  the  house  is 
driving  her  back  into  the  housekeeping  ranks  from 
which  she  had  escaped.  Therefore,  this  is  proving 
an  impediment  to  marriage.  It  is  becoming  more 
and  more  an  impossible  proposition  to  ask  a  girl 
to  give  up  the  freedom  of  paid  work  to  run  a  home. 
It  is  also  a  vigorous  argument  against  a  high  birth 
rate;  and,  though  I  am  of  those  who  support  birth 
control,  I  cannot  help  seeing  that  these  overworked 
homes,  and  these  apartment  houses,  where  dogs 
are  disliked  and  children  forbidden,  lead  to  mar- 
riages where  there  are  no  children  at  all — namely, 
to  bad  marriages.  Again,  the  servant  problem 
compels  the  husband  to  take  up  a  portion  of  the 
housework,  for  which  he  is,  as  a  rule,  only  more 
unsuitable  than  his  wife.  It  depresses  him  still 
more  than  it  depresses  her.  Lastly,  it  seems  to  me 
that,  except  among  the  rich,  the  servant  problem 
is  killing  entertainment.  The  American  woman  is 
amazing.  I  have  met  a  number  who  did  all  their 
own  work  and  yet  were  perfectly  waved  and  mani- 
cured, but  it  was  not  difficult  to  discern  the  nervous 
tension  of  the  hostess  as  she  watched  her  guests. 
I  have  seen  one  of  them,  with  agony  in  her  eyes, 
as  she  wondered  how  the  hired  porter  was  dishing 


i8o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

up  the  food  she  had  cooked.  The  American  house- 
wife is  clever.  In  America  people  cook  food,  while 
in  England  they  cremate  it;  but  what  effort!  what 
worry!  what  an  oath  those  women  must  register 
that  such  a  party  shall  never  happen  again!  So, 
the  mechanical  civilization  is  not  wholly  creative; 
it  is  also  remedial.  If  the  Middle  West  uses  agri- 
cultural machines  instead  of  men,  if  the  home  is 
principally  electric,  it  is  because  mankind  is  refus- 
ing any  longer  to  be  subject  to  mankind.  That  is 
good,  but  for  the  moment  it  is  most  uncomfortable. 
You  will  say  that  all  this  is  very  class-conscious, 
and  that  I  am  making  a  fuss  about  well-to-do 
women  who  have  to  work  (serve  them  jolly  well 
right!),  while  millions  of  American  women  have 
never  had  a  servant  at  all.  Well,  I  am  not  generally 
called  a  reactionary,  and  I  am  looking  forward  to 
mechanical  homes  for  the  poor  also,  who  should 
not  be  so  poor,  who,  too,  should  benefit  from  the 
mechanical  civilization  and  from  the  expert.  I 
want  liberty  and  rest  for  the  workingwoman,  who 
to-day  stands  in  the  social  system  as  if  seized  by 
an  octopus;  but  I  am  not  going  to  pretend  that  I 
view  without  anxiety  the  struggle  for  survival  of 
the  classes  which  have  attained  a  level  of  culture 
and  elegance  that  must  serve  as  a  standard  for  the 
rising  masses. 


MEGAPOLIS   SOUTHWARD  181 

It  is  late  already,  and  it  might  be  early  still,  so 
slightly  has  the  day  begun,  such  is  the  peace  of 
this  little  town  in  Alabama.  Above  my  head  the 
sky  is  dimmed  by  a  haze  of  heat.  An  idle  wind 
stirs  the  dust  into  reluctant  motion,  then  subsides. 
There  is  silence  in  the  township,  where  only  a  stray 
dog  wanders,  seeking  diversion  or  provender.  It 
is  Sunday  morning,  and  no  bells  ring.  I  go  along 
the  irregular  streets  over  the  old  cobbles  outlined 
with  grass.  Sitting  in  their  porches,  large  and 
content,  are  a  few  colored  women,  hands  folded; 
the  man  of  the  house,  for  some  reason  not  at  church, 
stares  meditatively  at  the  hedge  tangled  with  con- 
volvulus. From  a  distant  garden  I  hear  the 
chorus  of  a  song.  It  comes,  borne  upon  the  slight 
wind,  "Fo'  de  glory  ob  de  Lord."  This  is  the 
South.  I  have  passed  through  the  softly  molded 
hills  of  Tennessee,  seen  the  cotton  burst  its  pods; 
all  was  ease  and  peace.  Here,  no  more  the  rude 
comfort  of  the  West,  nor  the  glitter  of  New  York, 
but  a  casual  contentment  which  either  fails  to 
secure  material  goods  or  transcends  them.  I  have 
a  sense  of  cheerful  poverty.  Here  one  does  not 
care.  One  keeps  one's  spirit  calm  and  one's  man- 
ners equal.  Grace  and  weariness  inform  the  voices 
of  the  women. 

I  go  along  the  tree-lined  streets,  which  at  a  point 
cease  to  suggest  the  city,  but  mute  themselves 

13 


1 82  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

into  country  lanes;  past  a  few  surviving  houses  of 
the  Colonial  days,  low,  white,  and  matured  by 
neglect  as  well  as  time,  until  I  reach  the  cabins 
of  the  negroes,  where  they  live  narrowly  but  gayly, 
cooking  unexpected  things  and  discarding  tempo- 
rary griefs. 

Time  passes.  It  is  noon.  In  the  main  street 
the  trolley  cars  establish  fictitious  activity. 

It  is  the  afternoon,  and  the  heat  falls  more 
heavily.  Nearly  all  have  fled  the  streets;  they 
are  hidden  from  the  sun  which  strikes  now  with 
shafts  of  molten  brass  from  the  purple  vault  of 
the  sky. 

A  little  coolness  falls  as  the  shadows  lengthen. 
Near  the  soda  fountains  and  news  stands  reviving 
youth  seems  to  plot  mild  movement.  The  day  be- 
gins to  wane  as  a  hesitation  overwhelms  the  sun- 
set glow;    a  grayness  gains  and  makes  night. 

It  is  night  now  along  the  ragged  hedges  of  the 
little  Southern  city.  A  blunted  moon  slowly  passes 
from  the  color  of  a  rose  leaf  to  that  of  burnished 
copper.  The  tall  woods  of  thin  trees  are  spattered 
with  the  widowhood  of  the  Michaelmas  daisies  and 
the  scarlet  patches  of  iris.  The  breeze  is  heavy  in 
the  thick  leaves.  The  chorus  of  the  locusts  arises, 
that  is  like  a  breath  through  a  split  bamboo, 
blending  with  the  broken  carol  of  trie  cricket. 
All  is  soft  and  leisurely;  upon  a  doubtful  altar  un- 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  183 

cynical  content  is  good-humoredly  offered  up  "  Fo' 
de  glory  ob  de  Lord/' 

I  love  the  South.  I  like  the  beat  of  life  below 
Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  I  like  the  negligent  trot 
of  the  horses  that  no  one  hurries.  Above  all,  I  like 
the  grace  of  intercourse  with  this  people  of  a  civili- 
zation older,  in  a  sense,  than  that  of  England, 
because  they  were  cut  off  and  so  have  preserved 
much  that  England  has  lost.  The  haste  of  London 
has  not  seized  them,  and  yet  they  have  resisted  the 
dullness  which  befell  the  market  towns  of  Kent. 
I  like  their  voices;  their  words  are  gentle  and  vain; 
they  do  not  question,  nor  comment;  they  respect 
your  privacy,  or,  which  is  as  good,  do  not  care 
what  hides  within  your  privacy.  A  little  languid, 
easily  gay,  never  intrusive.  They  are  the  eternal 
aristocrats,  whose  strain  from  time  to  time  blends 
with  a  coarser  one,  sometimes  overwhelms  it. 
Something  of  this  hangs  even  about  busy,  indus- 
trial Atlanta  or  Birmingham.  In  despite  of  the 
growing  commerce  of  the  South,  it  accompanies  one 
through  Mississippi  to  New  Orleans,  and  I  per- 
ceived live  memories  of  the  Confederacy  even  in 
Texas. 

That  which  applies  to  the  true  South  also  reigns 
farther  north,  in  Kansas,  in  little  Evansville,  warm, 
leisurely,  and  most  charming.  I  found  it  in  Wash- 
ington.    Glowing  Washington,  near  as  it  may  be 


i84  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

to  the  Line,  is  a  Southern  city.  Indeed,  to  me,  all 
of  the  country  from  Florida  to  Yonkers  is  the 
South  rather  than  the  East.  New  York  itself  is 
not  a  Northern  city.  It  has  not  the  hardness,  and 
does  not  seem  to  suffer  from  the  moral  impulses 
which  begin  in  Connecticut.  It  is  gay  and  Oriental. 
Are  not  the  South  and  the  East  everywhere  much 
the  same? 

I  cannot  believe  that  one  can  dislike  Washington. 
To  walk  about  the  city  is  a  continual  pleasure,  for 
it  is  a  city  in  a  park.  Its  broad  streets  lined  with 
trees,  the  massive  whiteness  of  its  government 
offices,  nothing  of  this  is  wealthy,  but  all  of  it  is 
solid.  It  has  an  air  of  business,  and  when  we  re- 
member that  the  business  of  Washington  is  govern- 
ment, we  understand  that  this  business  need  not 
be  very  active.  As  at  night  you  go  to  the  Point, 
to  stare  into  the  deep  sky  shot  with  the  weird 
greenish  lights  of  the  printing  works  that  reflect 
into  the  Potomac,  you  discover  always  this  South- 
ern peace,  this  soft  protest  against  haste  and 
acquisitive  desire.  And  in  Washington,  for  the 
first  time  in  my  life,  in  a  misty  garden  I  saw  fireflies. 

That  is  the  exterior,  so  pleasant,  so  sweet.  And 
yet,  as  the  European  touches  the  South,  he  grows 
conscious  that  all  is  not  so  easy  as  it  seems.  In 
the  Jim  Crow  states  he  discovers  with  a  shock  of 
surprise  that  special  coaches  on  the  railroads  are 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  185 

reserved  for  the  colored  people,  that  they  occupy- 
only  the  three  rear  seats  in  street  cars,  and  that 
in  public  places  special  waiting  rooms  are  allocated 
to  them.  It  gives  him  a  shock  if  he  comes  from 
the  North,  where  he  has  seen  the  negroes  freely 
mixing  with  the  whites,  except  in  the  restaurants. 
He  receives  a  greater  shock  when  he  discovers  that 
in  America  once  black  is  always  black,  and  that  a 
remote  drop  of  African  blood  running  through  a 
white  vein  can  nullify  intellectual  attainment  and 
public  esteem. 

It  is  very  difficult  for  a  European  to  understand 
the  color  problem;  if  he  is  not  free-minded,  he 
easily  makes  a  mistake.  I  did  not  come  to  America 
with  the  traditional  prejudices  of  the  sentimental 
English,  many  of  whom  like  to  talk  of  the  negro 
as  a  man  and  a  brother.  It  is  very  easy  to  take  up 
that  attitude  when  you  are  English  and  never  see 
a  negro  except  in  a  music  hall.  It  is  quite  another 
matter  to  maintain  the  same  point  of  view  when 
you  live  in  a  town  where  the  black  outnumber  the 
white.  This  need  not  change  your  feelings  as  re- 
gards the  colored  man  himself,  but  it  must  change 
your  point  of  view  in  regard  to  the  social  problem 
he  represents. 

I  mean  by  this  that  one's  personal  liking  or  dis- 
like of  the  colored  man  need  not  influence  one's 
attitude  to  the  problem  of  the  race.    For  my  part, 


186  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

who  during  these  months  have  spoken  a  good  deal 
with  negroes,  I  like  them  very  much.  Above  all, 
I  like  their  almost  unfailing  cheerfulness,  the  beau- 
tiful smile  with  which  they  greet  the  slightest  cour- 
tesy or  consideration.  There  is  a  jolly  humanity 
about  the  colored  man.  When  he  serves  you  he 
does  more  than  that;  he  takes  care  of  you.  He  is 
sensuous  and  fatherly;  he  likes  life,  and  wants  you 
to  like  it,  too.  His  taste  for  colors,  his  fondness  of 
music,  the  lovely  gurgle  of  laughter  which  you  can 
draw  from  him  with  a  slight  pleasantry,  all  this 
appeals.  There  is  something  young  in  the  colored 
race,  and  perhaps  it  is  that  which  attracts.  He 
does  not  seem  to  worry  over  social  standing,  ma- 
terial success,  or  career;  he  seems  content,  as  Mr. 
Henry  James  would  have  said,  "beautifully  to  be," 
to  do  his  work,  to  marry  some  girl  with  a  large, 
white  smile,  and  teach  his  pickaninnies  how  to  sing, 
"Joshua  fit  the  battle  of  Jericho.,,  Sometimes  the 
innocence  of  the  colored  race  produces  delicious 
burlesque.  Once,  in  a  conversation  with  an  enor- 
mous friendly  fellow,  who  was  minding  a  motor  car 
which  had  broken  down,  and  which  he  was  trying 
to  repair  with  unexpected  tools,  such  as  a  cork- 
screw and  a  buttonhook,  we  came  to  talk  politics. 
From  interior  we  passed  to  international,  and  with 
immense  seriousness  he  said  to  me,  "Sir,  can  you 
indicate   to   me   the   concomitant   circumstances 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  187 

which  have  caused  the  international  difficulties  in 
the  circumference  of  Poland?"  His  eyes  shone  in 
their  large  whites;  he  looked  solemn  and  proud  as 
the  long,  round  words  came  off  his  tongue,  as  if  he 
took  an  almost  sensual  pleasure  in  their  weight,  if 
not  in  their  meaning.  I  think  that  there  I  glimpsed 
half  the  charm  of  the  colored  race — its  capacity  to 
find  a  toy,  whether  banjo  or  verbosity. 

Of  course  there  is  another  side.  I  have  two 
memories  of  that  other  side,  which  is  going  to  mean 
something  in  American  policy.  One  of  these  was 
a  full-blooded  young  negro,  who  was  finishing  his 
first  year  in  a  Northern  university,  and  who  in 
another  three  years  would  be  a  lawyer.  He 
would  follow  his  father  in  the  same  profession;  he 
was  keen-minded,  and,  even  in  conversation,  suffi- 
ciently oratorical  to  assure  me  that  he  would  make 
a  fine  pleader.  He  was  to  practice  in  New  Jersey, 
where  he  would  be  briefed  by  men  of  his  own  race 
and  by  white  men  in  native  cases.  He  rather  de- 
fined the  problem  to  me  without  saying  a  word 
about  it.  Here  was  the  African  entering  one  of  the 
chief  professions  of  the  white  man,  and  entering 
it  in  spite  of  his  color  ...  to  do  what?  to  be 
what?  Always  to  be  different;  always  apart,  of 
the  same  class,  not  of  the  same  kind. 

But  the  other  memory  is  sharper,  because  it  is 
more  eloquent  and  contained  in  five  sentences:  I 


188  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

was  watching  the  people  who  passed  in  the  street, 
from  a  window  where  I  sat  with  a  negro  preacher. 
He  was  concerned  with  his  race,  and  so  I  could  talk 
to  him  freely  about  the  negro  problem.  After  a 
while  there  passed,  quite  close  to  us,  a  girl  who  was 
probably  a  quadroon,  rather  pretty,  not  very  dark. 
I  had  been  talking  of  what  was  described  to  me  as 
"the  black  peril.,,  Suddenly  the  preacher  pointed 
to  the  girl  and  said:  "Whose  daughter  is  that,  do 
you  think  ?  Do  you  think  her  male  ancestors  were 
black  or  white  ?  Be  sure  that  that  child  comes  from 
a  stock  where  the  women  were  black  and  the  men 
white.  People  talk  to  you  of  the  black  peril.  I 
say  to  you,  what  of  the  white  peril  ?" 

I  did  not  answer  him.  What  do  I  know  of  these 
things?  All  I  am  doing,  in  America,  is  to  try  to 
understand,  and  when  on  one  side  I  find  a  white 
man  laying  down  that  as  a  social  being  the  negro 
does  not  exist,  when,  on  the  other  hand,  I  find  a 
negro,  here  and  there,  burning  with  anger  over 
social  wrongs,  all  I  can  conclude  as  a  free-minded 
man  is  that  here  lies  one  of  the  most  serious  prob- 
lems of  the  American  community.  America  has 
two  color  questions — the  negro  and  the  Japanese — 
and  it  is  all  very  well  for  the  European  to  lay  down 
what  America  ought  to  do  or  not  to  do  about  it; 
the  European  lives  in  another  continent  and  has 
not  those  problems  on  his  doorstep.     There  is  a 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  189 

feeling  in  America  that  the  colored  element  is 
politically  a  bad  element;  that  it  is  ignorant,  and 
generally  corrupt.  I  do  not  suppose  that  this  can 
be  proved,  because  one  never  can  prove  that  against 
thirteen  millions  of  people,  but  the  result  of  the 
attitude  is  that  a  question  which  cannot  be  handled 
constitutionally  has  to  be  handled  irregularly. 
Fearing  the  black  vote,  or  intimately  objecting  to 
its  being  cast  at  all,  it  is  quite  clear  that  irregular 
methods  are  being  used  to  prevent  the  negro  from 
exercising  the  franchise.  In  The  Nation  of  the 
6th  of  October,  1920,  we  find  an  extraordinary 
array  of  facts  as  to  the  treatment  of  black  women 
voters,  when  they  appeared  to  register.  It  seems 
that  supplements  were  found  to  the  ordinary  legal 
device  intended  to  deprive  negroes  of  their  vote, 
which  consists  in  compelling  them  to  show  that 
their  grandfather  could  read.  (This  means  dis- 
franchisement, as  the  grandfather  was  a  slave.) 
The  Nation  states  that  the  law  was  stretched  to 
keep  the  black  women  off  the  register;  that  diffi- 
cult legal  questions  were  put  to  them;  that  they 
were  asked,  "What  is  a  mandamus ?"  That  they 
were  refused  registration  for  failing  to  answer  ques- 
tions on  state  finance,  and  even  disfranchised  for 
mispronouncing  the  word  "municipal."  We  know 
also  that  lynching  is  still  considerably  practiced, 
not  only  for  sex  crimes,  but  for  theft,  and  even  for 


i9o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

lesser  reasons.  We  have  read  in  the  report  of  the 
subcommittee  of  the  Republican  National  Com- 
mittee on  Policy  and  Platform  that  in  1919  seven- 
ty-seven negroes  were  lynched,  as  against  only  four 
whites  and  two  Mexicans;  that  among  the  colored 
people  lynched  one  was  a  woman,  and  that  eleven 
were  burned  alive. 

We  see  all  that,  and  if  we  are  not  free-minded 
we  dismiss  the  situation  by  saying  that  the  Amer- 
icans are  dealing  unjustly  with  a  people  who,  after 
all,  represent  the  fruits  of  American  sin — namely, 
the  results  of  slavery,  just  as  Ireland  is  the  spirit 
of  English  sin;  a  people  who  are  not  responsible 
for  their  presence  in  the  United  States.  .  .  .  Only 
they  are  present  in  the  United  States,  and  theo- 
retical humanitarianism  can  do  nothing  to  remove 
what  is  a  real  difficulty.  It  is  no  use  suggesting 
all  sorts  of  legal  measures  if  they  are  repulsive  to 
public  opinion.  To-day  American  public  opinion 
is  not  going  to  tolerate  the  idea  of  conjugal,  or 
even  social,  relations  between  black  men  and  white 
women.  It  is  not  going  to  tolerate  social  inter- 
course in  public  places  of  refreshment  and  amuse- 
ment. It  considers  that  the  man  of  color  is  inferior 
and  must  so  stay.  There  are  many  reasons  why 
this  point  of  view  should  be  held,  and  the  European 
who  does  not  sympathize  with  it  is  an  ostrich. 

Which  does  not  mean  that  this  point  of  view  can 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  191 

be  maintained  without  friction.  So  long  as  the 
negro  was  either  a  slave  or  a  man  of  very  low 
earning  power,  he  did  not  make  a  difficulty.  But 
if  we  consider  that,  since  the  Civil  War,  the  houses 
in  possession  of  the  negroes  have  passed  from 
twelve  thousand  to  six  hundred  thousand;  the 
wealth  they  own,  from  twenty  million  dollars  to 
eleven  hundred  million  dollars;  that  in  those  days 
only  10  per  cent  could  read  and  write,  whereas 
now  80  per  cent  can  do  so;  that  negroes  now  op- 
erate insurance  companies  with  assets  of  three  and 
a  half  millions,  and  have  sixty  millions  of  policies 
in  force;  that  there  are  seventy-two  negro  banks — 
one  realizes  that  here  is  a  movement  made  infi- 
nitely more  serious  by  material  wealth  and  educa- 
tional power. 

For  the  movement  is  not  going  to  stop.  The 
negro  is  acquiring  pride.  Whereas  in  the  old  days 
white  blood  was  admired  and  a  quadroon  given 
the  front  pew  in  church,  now  colored  opinion  turns 
against  the  girl  who  consorts  with  a  white  man. 
The  negro  may  be  kept  back  publicly,  but  he  can- 
not be  kept  back  financially  and  commercially, 
because  business  knows  no  colors.  While  it  is  true 
that  the  colored  population  does  not  increase  very 
fast,  because  its  heavy  birth  rate  is  balanced  by  a 
heavy  death  rate,  particularly  among  half-breeds, 
it  does  increase.    What  is  more  serious  is  that  its 


192  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

wealth  per  head  increases  still  more  than  the  heads 
themselves.  Within  fifty  years  America  may  have 
to  count  with  a  solid  block  of  twenty-five  million 
people,  a  great  number  of  whom  will  belong  to  the 
bourgeoisie,  and  a  few  of  whom  will  be  millionaires. 
I  have  put  this  point  to  several  Americans,  and  they 
have  invariably  answered:  "It  won't  matter  a 
bit;  we  don't  care  whether  the  negro  is  rich  or 
poor.  He's  just  a  nigger.  If  he  becomes  a  million- 
aire, he  won't  find  anything  to  spend  his  money 
on."  Which  is  all  very  well,  but  the  people  who 
so  lightly  wave  away  the  question  are  overlooking 
the  intense  commercial  competition  which  prevails 
in  America,  the  fierce  struggle  for  money  at  any 
cost,  on  any  terms.  Are  we  really  to  believe  that 
when  the  colored  race  possesses  a  large  buying 
power,  the  white  entrepreneur  will  indefinitely  re- 
fuse all  this  good  money  which  wants  to  get  into 
the  theaters,  into  the  restaurants,  and  even  into 
the  social  life?  In  one  of  his  lighter  sketches, 
Thackeray  tells  a  story  of  a  footman  who  made  a 
fortune  by  speculating  in  railway  stock.  He  an- 
nounced this  to  the  baronet,  his  master,  when 
giving  notice  .  .  .  and  Sir  Thomas,  perceiving 
that  the  money  had  bridged  the  social  gulf, 
promptly  shook  James  by  the  hand  and  said  he 
would  be  glad  of  his  acquaintance.  Is  it  not  pos- 
sible that  when  the  negro  comes  into  the  fullness 


MEGAPOLIS  SOUTHWARD  193 

of  his  power  and  his  wealth  there  will  be  white 
people  ready  to  kowtow  to  him  because  he  is  rich  ? 
just  as  to-day  they  kowtow  to  other  white  men, 
overlook  their  extraction,  if  they  happen  to  be 
rich.  If  they  do,  social  life  will  grow  immensely 
complicated.  Collisions  and  race  feeling  are  quite 
intense  enough  when  the  negro  is  poor;  they  will 
become  violent  when  he  is  rich. 

The  solution  of  this  problem  is  a  matter  for 
Americans,  just  as  is  the  Japanese  problem.  Amer- 
icans are  perfectly  entitled  to  refuse  to  admit  the 
Japanese,  and  to  treat  their  colored  fellow  citizens 
as  directed  by  the  majority.  An  Englishman  is 
quite  as  entitled  to  have  an  opinion  on  this  sub- 
ject as  an  American  to  have  one  on  the  Irish  prob- 
lem; but  an  English  solution  of  the  problem  is  an 
impertinence;  so  I  will  merely  suggest  the  three 
ways  out  which  have  been  put  to  me  by  American 
citizens.  One  of  them  is  a  St.  Bartholomew's  Day. 
The  second  is  complete  social  acceptance.  The 
third  is  the  creation  of  a  free  black  republic  in  an 
African  settlement. 

St.  Bartholomew's  Day  is,  of  course,  absurd  be- 
cause it  is  impracticable;  modern  sentiment  makes 
such  a  suggestion  into  a  sinister  joke.  Social 
equality  might  come  about  in  the  course  of  cen- 
turies, but  it  is  at  present  hardly  conceivable  that 
the  prejudice  will  go  down.    As  for  the  new  negro 


i94  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

republic,  we  have  the  experience  of  Liberia  as  a 
warning.  Unless  the  American  government  is  pre- 
pared to  purchase  a  very  large  area,  and  to  spend 
hundreds  of  millions  in  converting  it  into  a  modern 
country,  the  negroes  would  refuse  to  emigrate. 
Still,  this  sounds  the  most  sensible  of  the  three 
solutions,  though  it  is  a  question  whether  America 
could  do  without  her  colored  labor,  which  is  becom- 
ing more  and  more  skilled,  and  is  fairly  easily  man- 
aged. I  repeat  that  it  would  be  an  impertinence 
on  my  part  to  suggest  to  the  Americans  what  they 
should  do  in  this  difficulty;  but  it  is  within  my 
province  to  take  note  of  the  difficulty  and  to  sug- 
gest to  my  hosts  that  here  is  a  social  problem  so 
grave  that,  if  it  is  not  taken  in  hand  in  a  purposeful 
manner,  it  will  in  time  produce  disturbances,  ma- 
terial damage,  and  even  bloodshed. 

It  seems  far  away,  this  social  question,  as  I  go 
along  the  sleepy  streets  of  the  little  city  in  Ala- 
bama. Here  there  is  no  problem,  but  only  peace 
and  a  certain  satisfaction.  In  the  words  of  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward,  life  is  here  "a  pleasant  promenade 
between  two  eternities."  But  then,  there  is  never 
much  noise  while  the  clouds  gather  for  a  storm. 


VI 

PARTHIAN    SHOTS 

IN  a  way  I  gained  my  most  vivid  impression  of 
America  on  returning  to  London.  That  city 
made  America  so  remarkable  and  in  some  senses  so 
desirable.  I  saw  with  a  new  vision  the  pageant  of 
London,  was  struck  by  its  blackness,  the  low  build- 
ings, the  deceptively  broad  streets.  The  English 
institutions  came  up  afresh.  To  stay  once  more 
at  a  real  English  hotel  (I  tried  three  in  eight 
days,  and  then  gave  in),  to  return  to  these  places 
where  one  cannot  buy  a  newspaper  or  cigar,  where 
there  is  no  telephone  in  your  bedroom,  or  even  hot 
water!  That  gives  one  an  idea  of  the  state  of 
materialistic  barbarism  in  which  England  still  has 
her  being!  And  to  see  with  this  fatal  and,  I  trust, 
temporary,  new  vision,  the  average  English  girl, 
with  her  clothes  straight  from  the  rag  bag,  and 
her  hair  straight  from  the  pillow,  to  compare  her 
with  the  thousands  of  smart  little  persons,  who 
look  as  if  they  were  made  of  enameled  metal, 
whom  you  can  see  any  morning  coming  out  of  the 
Grand  Central  ...  it  was  rather  a  shock! 


196  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  to  be  reabsorbed  by  the 
harmonious  calm,  the  ancient  poise  of  a  country 
that  finds  more  contentment  in  its  past  than  in 
dreams  of  the  future,  to  see  once  more  in  the  eyes 
of  women,  after  the  hard  brightness  of  Broadway, 
a  glow  which  bespeaks  tenderness  and  illusion, 
made  one  feel  that  America  was  hectic  and  exces- 
sive. But  I  think  I  have  suggested  that  before. 
So  it  becomes  difficult  to  sum  up  my  emotions 
before  the  panorama  which  is  modern  America. 
Most  things  must  be  seen  to  be  believed,  but 
America  is  almost  incredible,  indescribable,  irrecon- 
cilable with  herself.  I  have  seen  a  good  deal  of 
her,  I  suppose;  I  am  tempted  to  an  excursion  into 
the  guidebook,  to  say  something  of  Pittsburgh, 
smoky,  sullen;  of  Dayton,  that  little  city  so  monu- 
mental for  its  size;  of  Columbus,  spacious  and 
gray,  with  its  broad,  pleasant,  green  streets  and 
its  occasional  gift  of  silence;  of  Indianapolis,  almost 
as  spectacular  in  its  layout  as  Washington;  of  little 
Evansville,  so  elderly  and  quiet  by  the  broad  Ohio 
that  flows  in  sleepy  calm;  of  Omaha,  big,  grim, 
and  wedded  to  utility;  and  yet  again  of  Chicago, 
savage  Chicago,  where  during  the  short  space  of 
twenty-two  months  sixteen  policemen  were  mur- 
dered on  duty,  vainglorious  Chicago,  where  Mayor 
Thompson  announces  to  the  world  on  his  posters: 
"Boost  Chicago!     We  lead  the  world  as  a  rail 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  197 

center!  Forty-seven  roads!  A  train  a  minute!" 
It  is  with  reluctance  that  I  part  from  Chicago  and 
its  mayor.  They  go  together;  Balzac  would  have 
been  interested  in  them. 

As  soon  as  you  go  West,  leaving  behind  scraps 
of  Boston,  a  few  houses  in  Philadelphia,  the  green 
beauty  of  Washington,  and  jeweled  Manhattan, 
you  are  in  a  country  where  the  towns  are  all 
alike.  In  the  center  of  a  town,  or  in  its  suburbs, 
nothing  will  tell  you  whether  you  are  in  Ohio 
or  in  Iowa.  You  find  the  same  quadrangular 
layout,  the  same  houses,  the  same  stores,  lunch- 
ing places,  and  chapels.  In  the  suburbs,  the 
same  timber  bungalows.  This  is  easily  explained 
by  the  fact  that  most  cities  in  the  Middle  West 
and  West  were  founded  within  fifty  years  of  one 
another  by  people  who  were  moving  westward,  who 
naturally  built  the  new  cities  in  the  image  of  those 
they  were  leaving  behind.  Moreover,  these  were 
not  rich  people,  but  pioneers  struggling  with  every 
possible  difficulty,  limited  materials,  expensive 
labor,  bad  transport.  They  had  no  time  for  beauty; 
also  they  were  immigrants  from  the  East,  among 
whom  the  aspiration  to  beauty,  which  vaguely 
informed  the  mind  of  the  workman  in  the  Gothic 
and  even  the  Georgian  period,  did  not  exist;  the 
aspiration  to  beauty  is  a  thing  which  arises  slowly 

among  young  dreamers,  who  are  laughed  at  by 
14 


198  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

their  families  and  their  fellow  townsmen,  but  who 
eventually  have  their  own  way.  So  the  cities  are 
unbeautiful,  and  only  of  late  years,  when  wealth 
accumulated,  has  the  aspiration  to  beauty  begun 
to  show  itself  in  the  shape  of  capitols  and  uni- 
versities. It  is  not  always  successful,  but  the  spirit 
is  there;  the  gray,  uniform  cities  of  America  are 
merely  the  forerunners  of  a  new  architecture. 

But  I  do  not  want  to  discuss  architecture. 
Deucalion  flung  stones  to  make  men,  but  in 
America  it  is  the  men  who  have  flung  the  stones, 
and  perchance  they  will  make  gods.  The  Amer- 
ican child  is  to  me  a  greater  puzzle  than  the 
American  adult.  I  cannot  see  how  the  emo- 
tional American,  dominated  by  moral  impulses, 
develops  out  of  the  shrewd  and  hard  American 
child.  It  is  almost  inhuman.  It  hates  to  be  fon- 
dled; it  seldom  kisses  an  adult;  it  wholly  differs 
from  the  emotional,  enthusiastic  English  child, 
which  hurls  itself  upon  the  people  it  likes  and  in- 
flicts upon  them  sticky  embraces.  It  does  not  give 
itself;  it  knows  what  it  wants  and  takes  it  with 
strange  brutality.  If  this  applied  only  to  the 
female  children,  I  could  understand  it,  for  some- 
thing of  this  survives  in  the  American  girl,  before 
marriage  and  misfortune  have  turned  her  into  a 
human  being;  but  the  male  American  child  shows 
only  the  hardness  of  the  American  man,  not  the 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  199 

gentleness  and  tenderness  which  make  him  so 
attractive.  This  may  come  from  the  close  contact 
between  the  American  child  and  its  parents;  it 
lives  with  them,  is  of  them;  it  is  treated  seriously; 
therefore,  it  does  not  look  upon  the  adult  as  a  god. 
Notably,  in  the  well-to-do  classes,  there  is  no  chil- 
dren's hour,  say  half  past  five,  when  the  anxious 
prisoners  of  the  nursery  are  allowed,  trembling 
with  excitement  and  with  awe,  to  enter  the  holy 
presence  of  the  grown-ups.  It  is  no  fun  being  an 
American  child;  one  grows  up  without  idols,  and 
one  must  make  some  for  oneself,  since  mankind  at 
all  ages  lives  only  by  error. 

The  hard  child  suggests  the  hard  home,  which 
is  characteristic  of  America.  I  visited  many  houses 
in  the  United  States,  and,  except  among  the 
definitely  rich,  I  found  them  rather  uncomfortable. 
They  felt  bare,  untenanted;  they  were  too  neat, 
too  new;  they  indicated  that  the  restaurant,  the 
theater,  the  cinema  were  often  visited;  one  missed 
the  comfortable  accumulation  of  broken  screens, 
old  fire  irons,  and  seven-year-old  volumes  of  the 
Illustrated  London  News,  which  make  up  the  dusty, 
frowsy  feeling  of  home.  The  American  house  is 
not  a  place  where  one  lives,  but  a  place  where  one 
merely  sleeps,  eats,  sits,  works.  You  will  say  that 
makes  up  home  life,  but  it  does  not;  there  is  some- 
thing else,  which  can  arise  only  out  of  a  compound 


200  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

of  dullness,  boiled  mutton,  an  ill-cut  lawn,  a  dog, 
a  cat,  and  some  mice  to  keep  the  cat  amused.  I 
cannot  explain  it  better  than  that,  and  Americans 
may  not  understand  what  I  mean,  although  any 
English  person  will.  Leaving  aside  the  homes  of 
the  working  class,  which  are  much  the  same  all 
the  world  over — viz.,  miserable  spaces  where  a 
young  wife  is  by  poverty,  child-bearing,  and  male 
neglect  turned  into  an  old  woman  by  the  time  she 
is  thirty,  I  suspect  that  what  affects  the  American 
home  is  the  scarcity  of  the  slave  class  which  Europe 
calls  domestics.  Human  beings  cannot  make  their 
own  comfort;  they  are  too  lazy;  if  they  are  com- 
pelled to  choose  between  a  comfortable  household 
of  which  they  must  do  the  work,  and  shop-gazing 
or  cinema-going,  they  will  seldom  choose  the  home. 
All  comfort  depends  on  slavery,  and  the  European 
domestic  servant  is  a  slave — perhaps  well  paid, 
perhaps  well  treated,  perhaps  even  independent, 
but  a  slave,  attendant  upon  the  home  of  the  master 
for  one  hundred  and  fifty-six  hours  a  week  out  of 
one  hundred  and  sixty-eight.  America  lacks  that 
class;  therefore,  she  has  efficiency,  but  she  has  not 
comfort.  Indeed,  she  has  ceased  to  care  for  com- 
fort. You  discover  this  particularly  in  the  hos- 
pitals, of  which  I  visited  three.  No  attempt  was 
made  to  procure  flowers  for  the  patients;  there 
were  no  hand  fans  for  fevered  brows;   the  lights 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  201 

were  not  shaded  to  the  eyes;  in  hot  weather 
ventilation  was  bad  unless  the  windows  were  kept 
open,  which  meant  that  the  blinds  flapped;  the 
nurses  were  self-complacent  and  official;  every- 
thing was  well  done  technically;  the  surgery  was 
audacious,  the  learning  immense — but  it  was  not 
comfortable.  The  American  attitude  is:  "You  are 
ill.  We  will  dose  you  until  you  are  well,,,  just  as, 
addressing  a  boiler:  "You  are  out  of  order.  We 
will  overhaul  your  rivets  and  bolts. "  It  makes  one 
long  for  the  European  sister  of  charity.  She  is 
pathetically  incompetent;  her  finger  nails  are  not 
aseptic,  but  she  can  smile  and  stroke  a  headache 
away. 

Perhaps  I  was  wrong  to  say  that  America  has  no 
slave  domestic  class.  She  has  the  married  woman. 
In  an  earlier  chapter  I  suggested  that  the  American 
married  woman  is  sweated.  She  is  so,  particularly 
on  the  farms,  where  she  is  sacrificed  to  the  financial 
ambitions  of  her  husband.  Mark  Leland  Hill  Odea 
has  written  a  terrifying  little  play  about  that,  where 
the  farmer's  wife  is  driven  mad  with  hysteria  be- 
cause her  husband  continues  to  put  money  into 
the  farm;  he  leaves  her  to  wear  her  old  body  out, 
cleaning  and  cooking,  and  on  the  anniversary  of 
her  wedding  day  refuses  her  a  plate-washing  ma- 
chine which  shall  spare  her  poor  old  hands;  in- 
stead, he  buys  yet  more  agricultural  plant  that 


202  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

shall  increase  his  fortune.  Again,  in  the  Pictorial 
Review  of  December,  1920,  we  find  the  tragic  story 
of  another  farmer's  wife  who,  after  many  years, 
inherits  six  hundred  dollars,  and  for  the  first  time 
has  a  chance  to  give  her  family  Christmas  pres- 
ents; her  money  is  taken  away  by  her  husband, 
who  with  it  buys  six  tombstones.  I  suppose 
that  sort  of  thing  happens  in  Europe  too,  but 
in  Europe  it  is  less  shocking,  because  there  most 
people  are  in  need,  whereas  in  America  the  farm- 
ers are  not  in  need,  but  in  a  hysterical  state  of 
financial  ambition.  Some  of  those  farmers  might 
quite  properly  buy  their  wives  tombstones  on 
their  wedding  day. 

It  is  horrible  and  it  is  splendid.  It  is  part  of  the 
picture  of  the  American  energy  which  keeps  the 
shops  in  the  towns  open  till  nine  and  ten  o'clock 
at  night,  including  Saturdays  and  in  some  cases 
Sundays.  There  is  a  fury  of  production  and  a  fury 
of  spending;  there  is  an  intoxication  in  the  air 
which  at  first  terrifies  the  stranger  and  soon  influ- 
ences him.  I  felt  it  myself  a  few  weeks  after  arriv- 
ing. I  had  never  cared  much  for  money  before, 
holding  my  little  European  ideas  of  a  comfortable 
life  and  pleasant  conversation,  but  by  degrees,  as 
I  took  contact  with  the  Americans,  those  bersekers 
of  commerce,  I  found  myself  wanting  an  automo- 
bile, like  them,  a  big  banking  account,  like  them, 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  203 

and  a  bigger  banking  account,  like  them;  I  learned 
to  smoke  expensive  cigars,  like  the  Italian  plate 
layers,  and  to  say,  "It's  only  five  dollars/'  instead 
of,  "A  guinea,  that's  a  bit  thick."  Something  gets 
into  you;  you  grow  discontented;  you  haven't 
got  enough;  you  fight  for  it;  you  make  harder 
bargains;  in  your  armchair  you  don't  think  of 
vague  things  as  your  languid  gaze  follows  the 
tobacco  smoke,  but,  instead,  you  ask  yourself,  "I 
wonder  whether  by  saying  nothing  and  waiting  a 
day  I  could  squeeze  another  five  hundred  dollars 
out  of  that  deal  ?"  Competition  and  example  seize 
the  stranger;  he  falls  to  savage  desire;  his  cupid- 
ity, his  secretiveness,  his  resourcefulness — all  that 
develops.  In  five  months  I  felt  how  America  forges 
and  tempers  the  soft  iron  of  Europe  into  chilled 
steel. 

This  is  not  an  attack;  it  is  grudging  admiration, 
for  I  confess  that  I  took  a  certain  pleasure  in  the 
struggling  ferocity,  the  haste,  the  careless  collec- 
tion of  wealth  which  make  up  American  life.  Only 
one  asks  oneself,  What  is  this  leading  to  ?  America 
is  so  much  in  a  state  of  formation  that  she  has  not 
yet  acquired  what  I  suppose  one  may  call  poise. 
She  has  no  leisured  class,  the  class  which  uncon- 
sciously and  often  in  a  hostile  spirit  promotes 
beauty  by  providing  a  market  for  the  arts.  The 
capitalistic    class   of  America    is   beginning   con- 


2o4  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

sciously  to  pursue  beauty  and  to  give  its  patronage 
to  the  arts,  but  if  you  search  for  beauty  you  seldom 
find  it;  it  is  a  thing  which  happens,  which  flourishes 
in  spite  of  difficulties.  The  beauty  which  you  cap- 
ture grows  domesticated;  like  a  tiger  long  impris- 
oned in  a  cage,  it  forgets  how  to  spring.  This 
applies  also  to  the  pursuit  of  culture,  the  impulse 
to  knowledge,  of  which  the  American  women's 
clubs  are  a  magnificent  example.  The  cultural  im- 
pulse of  America  is  still  on  the  surface  because 
it  leaves  the  habits  of  the  individual  what  they 
were.  Culture  is  not  knowledge,  it  is  not  informa- 
tion, it  is  not  even  good  manners:  Sir  Pitt  Craw- 
ley in  Vanity  Fair  is  drunken  and  boorish,  but  a 
gentleman  all  the  same.  True  culture  is  one's 
father's  culture  more  than  one's  own.  It  is  not 
how  one  thinks  that  matters,  but  the  way  one 
lives,  and,  though  America  is  thinking  much  more 
and  more  clearly  than  does  Europe,  she  is  still 
living  in  the  middle-class  way  of  i860.  She  is 
laying  down  the  road  to  intellectual  emancipation, 
but  she  has  only  just  begun  to  travel  it.  Also  the 
acquisitiveness  of  the  pioneer  is  still  struggling 
against  the  efflorescent  culture  of  the  universities. 
Every  magazine  is  choked  with  advertisements  of 
schools  which  teach  salesmanship  or  train  you  to 
become  a  convincing  business  speaker.  The  appeal 
is  generally  monetary,  and  seldom  cultural.  Knowl- 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  205 

edge  is  being  offered  in  terms  of  commercial  power, 
not  in  terms  of  pure  knowledge. 

I  know  that  this  prevails  also  in  Europe,  but  it 
prevails  in  a  different  way;  there  is  less  ambition, 
less  contest.  There  is  more  ease;  something  that 
one  may  describe  as  a  static  harmony  of  life.  The 
difference  cannot  be  better  stated  than  it  was  to 
me  by  an  American  who  said:  "You  will  never 
understand  us  until  you  get  this  clear.  If  an 
Italian  in  Italy  owns  a  successful  hotel  the  only 
thing  he  will  want  is  to  go  on  running  that  hotel 
successfully,  and  when  he  dies  to  leave  it  to  his 
son  or  his  daughter's  husband.  But  the  American 
(or  Italian-American)  will  be  miserable  unless  by 
the  time  he  is  forty-five  he  controls  two  or  three 
hotels;  his  son  will  look  upon  himself  as  a  failure 
unless  in  the  end  he  is  president  of  a  corporation 
controlling  a  chain  of  hotels  from  coast  to  coast." 
This  seems  to  be  ideally  true,  and  it  is  easily  ex- 
plained— democracy  explains  it  to  a  certain  extent; 
whereas  in  Europe,  and  particularly  in  England, 
the  desire  of  an  ambitious  man  is  to  bear  a  title,  in 
America,  where  he  cannot  obtain  a  title,  the  only 
possible  distinction  is  wealth.  Therefore,  he  strug- 
gles for  wealth  as  a  European  struggles  for  social 
recognition.  But  that  is  a  minor  cause,  because  the 
struggle  for  wealth  in  America  is  infinitely  more 
savage  than  is  in  Europe  the  struggle  for  distinc- 


206  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

tion.  There  is  something  else,  and  that  something 
is  seldom  taken  into  account.  The  true  cause  is 
found  within  the  boundless  resources  of  America. 
Fifty  years  ago  most  of  America  was  untouched. 
Within  a  single  century  most  of  the  coal,  iron, 
and  oil  deposits,  also  the  wheat  fields,  have  been 
brought  to  bear.  Most  of  the  great  fortunes  are  a 
couple  of  generations  old;  they  were  made  easily, 
almost  fortuitously.  They  were  not  made  slowly 
and  cautiously  as  they  were  in  Europe  by  genera- 
tions which  had  time  to  grow  used  to  being  just 
a  little  richer  than  the  generation  before;  great 
American  fortunes  arose  like  mushrooms,  like  colos- 
sal mushrooms  which  overhung  the  landscape.  So 
the  poorer  pioneer  said  to  himself:  "Why  should 
I  not  do  what  these  others  have  done  so  quickly, 
so  easily?  The  resources  are  there."  That  is  the 
point;  in  America  the  resources  were  there,  while 
in  Europe  they  were  not.  European  resources  were 
developed  slowly,  over  about  six  hundred  years; 
American  resources  were  developed  in  a  night. 
Thus  the  European  learned  that  there  was  little 
room  for  his  ambition  and  turned  to  easy  living; 
the  American  learned  that  there  was  the  widest 
room  for  the  wildest  ambition,  and  turned  to  the 
inflamed  life.  The  American  is  no  more  desirous, 
no  more  ruthless,  no  more  money-grubbing  than 
any  other  kind  of  man;  after  all,  he  is  merely  any 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  207 

other  kind  of  man.  He  is  the  creature  of  magnifi- 
cent circumstances,  the  child  of  endless  oppor- 
tunity. He  has,  in  a  sense,  inherited  the  world; 
it  is  natural  that  he  should  exploit  his  heritage. 

It  is  a  platitude  to  say  that  one  learns  most 
about  mankind  in  the  police  courts.  It  is  also  not 
quite  a  truth,  for  surely  men  do  not  lie  quite  as 
much  outside  as  inside  those  courts;  but  one  does 
learn  something  of  the  psychology  of  the  nation. 
One  learns  it  from  the  judges.  Their  way  of 
doing  things  is  the  way  in  which  people  like  them 
done.  I  have  seen  a  number  of  cases  tried,  and 
nearly  all  yield  a  conclusion.  Here  are  three.  In 
the  first  a  man  was  charged  with  indecency.  In- 
stead of  sending  him  to  jail,  the  magistrate  ascer- 
tained that  he  was  sick,  probably  feeble-minded, 
so  he  sent  him  to  the  workhouse  for  observation. 
Also,  he  asked  him  what  fine  he  could  pay.  The 
accused  said  fifty  dollars,  and  finally  confessed  that 
he  could  raise  a  hundred  dollars.  The  magistrate 
then  fined  him  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  "to 
force  him  to  work."  This  seemed  to  me  humane 
and  burlesque.  One  likes  the  idea  of  fining  a  man 
only  a  figure  which  he  can  meet,  but  one  discerns 
muddled  thinking  in  finding  a  man  sick,  presumably 
irresponsible,  and  then  fining  him.  What  is  inter- 
esting is  the  humane  desire  to  discover  by  medical 
examination  whether  the  prisoner  was  responsible. 


2o8  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

The  second  case  was  that  of  a  motorist  charged 
with  having  passed  a  street  car  on  the  wrong  side. 
The  magistrate  put  back  the  case,  gave  the  pris- 
oner a  copy  of  the  traffic  laws,  told  him  to  sit  down 
and  study  them,  and  to  come  back  for  examination 
in  two  hours.  If  he  failed  in  any  answer  he  would 
be  fined  fifty  dollars;  if  he  was  perfect,  he  would 
be  let  off  with  twenty  dollars.  This  seems  to  me 
perfect  justice,  for  it  repairs  while  it  punishes. 

The  third  case  led  to  different  conclusions.  It 
was  a  matrimonial  quarrel,  where  a  wife  charged 
her  husband  with  assault;  another  couple  was 
mixed  up  with  the  case.  As  I  listened  to  them  I 
felt  that  they  were  all  liars.  Perhaps  they  were. 
What  was  interesting  was  the  behavior  of  the 
attorneys,  who  disputed  loudly,  unrebuked  by  the 
magistrate,  and  made  pandemonium  in  the  court. 
When  the  magistrate  began  to  sum  up  against  the 
defendant,  his  attorney  had  the  audacity  to  inter- 
rupt .  .  .  and  the  magistrate  was  weak  enough 
to  say  he  would  go  on  with  the  case.  A  little  later, 
the  magistrate  prepared  to  discharge  the  defendant. 
This  was  met  by  a  violent  protest  from  the  plain- 
tiff's attorney  .  .  .  upon  which  the  magistrate 
again  resumed  the  hearing.  Ultimately  he  dis- 
charged the  defendant.  Absolute  Gilbert  &  Sulli- 
van; no  Englishman  could  avoid  being  shocked  by 
the  complete  contempt  shown  by  everybody  for 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  209 

the  solemnities  of  the  law.  For  a  tithe  of  such  con- 
duct the  attorneys  would  have  been  turned  out  of 
an  English  court.  I  have  seen  this  happen  in  sev- 
eral places.  I  have  seen  a  state  attorney  address 
a  witness  while  sprawling  on  a  table.  The  judges 
never  exact  respect  for  themselves;  they  make 
their  sittings  into  social  parties;  they  seem  weak, 
and  it  may  be  that  they  are  too  human.  One  of 
them  has  carried  familiarity  so  far  as  to  dice  for 
the  fine  with  the  prisoner.  (In  Chicago;  the  pris- 
oner lost.)  All  this  offends,  but  in  reality  it  should 
not  offend,  as  it  means  only  that  humanity  has 
perhaps  gone  too  far,  except  that  it  brings  the  law 
into  contempt,  makes  the  law  uncertain.  The  weak 
judge  who  allows  himself  to  be  bullied  into  an 
acquittal  is  the  same  judge  who  would  give  a  fif- 
teen years'  sentence  for  a  crime  deserving  twelve 
months.  The  weak  are  always  the  violent,  and,  in 
that  sense,  American  justice  is  as  liable  to  human 
excess  as  it  is  capable  of  human  tenderness.  But 
in  the  main  it  is  informed  by  the  sympathetic  spirit 
which  has  led  North  Dakota  to  grant  illegitimate 
children  rights  to  the  property  of  their  father  equal 
to  that  of  his  legitimate  issue. 

A  similar  impression  arises  from  institutions  such 
as  the  Domestic  Relations  Court,  which  is  pri- 
marily intended  to  settle  as  amicably  as  possible 
difficulties  inside  the  family.    It  works  in  conjunc- 


2io  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

tion  with  a  department  of  social  service,  and  han- 
dles the  cases  which  the  department  cannot  settle. 
And  it  handles  them  with  the  broad  humanity 
which  characterizes  this  side  of  America.  For  in- 
stance, I  saw  a  case  dealt  with  where  a  wife  was 
demanding  from  her  husband  support  which  he 
refused  on  the  plea  that  she  insisted  on  making  a 
home  for  her  mother;  the  mother-in-law  made 
trouble  between  them.  The  judge  dealt  with  this 
case  as  a  familiar  friend.  He  first  pointed  out  to 
the  man  that  his  mother-in-law  was  old  and  in 
need,  and  that  somebody  must  take  care  of  her; 
but  he  also  suggested  to  the  wife  that  her  husband 
had  the  first  right  to  the  privacy  of  his  home,  and 
that  she  must  take  his  needs  into  account  as  well 
as  those  of  her  mother.  Finally,  instead  of  sen- 
tencing the  man  to  pay  so  much  a  week,  and  evict- 
ing the  mother-in-law,  which  would  have  been  the 
strict  solution  of  the  case,  the  judge  sent  the  hus- 
band and  wife  to  discuss  his  remarks  in  his  cham- 
bers. They  came  out  later  with  a  treaty  of  peace; 
the  man  agreed  to  support,  and  his  wife  agreed  to 
make  arrangements  with  another  member  of  the 
family  to  take  in  her  mother.  A  little  later  the 
judge  settled  two  cases  of  nonsupport  of  a  wife  by 
inducing  the  man  to  give  the  home  another  chance 
for  a  fortnight,  and  then  to  come  to  court  again. 
In  a  similar  case,  where  the  man  was  out  of  work, 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  211 

the  judge  brought  the  parties  together  and  under- 
took to  provide  a  job  for  the  man.  The  most 
impressive  case,  however,  was  that  of  a  girl  of  fif- 
teen, feeble-minded  and  pregnant  by  a  man  who 
was  willing  to  marry  her.  Instead  of  following  the 
obvious  wooden  course,  and  letting  the  man  off 
on  condition  that  he  married  the  girl,  the  judge 
decided  that  at  the  time  she  was  unfit  to  marry, 
and  that  there  was  no  point  in  upholding  morals 
against  eugenics.  He  therefore  placed  her  under 
medical  observation,  intending  to  deal  with  her  on 
the  medical  report  alone.  If  she  was  proved  feeble- 
minded, he  would  send  her  into  a  home,  but  he 
refused  to  be  a  party  to  the  bringing  forth  of  prob- 
ably imbecile  children.  All  this  seems  to  me 
admirable;  it  is  more  than  human;  it  is  sensible, 
and  it  represents  the  most  enviable  side  of  Amer- 
ican humanitarianism. 

One  sees  most  of  American  humanity  when  one 
visits  the  remedial  institutions.  I  saw  two  of  these 
in  St.  Louis,  one  shameful,  the  other  admirable.  The 
first  was  the  Children's  House  of  Detention,  a  dirty, 
gloomy  prison  where  the  children  are  imprisoned 
until  they  are  tried  in  their  special  court.  I  don't 
think  they  are  happy.  They  are  kept  together  and 
do  not  seem  to  fear  the  officials;  they  are  examined 
and  looked  after  physically — but  the  grayness  of 
the  place!    The  ugly  tables  and  the  poor  food;  the 


212  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

mug  of  water  and  the  piece  of  bread  laid  on  the 
table  without  a  plate !  This  for  children  who  have 
not  been  tried,  and  are  therefore  not  guilty.  That 
is  a  bad  survival,  and  St.  Louis  has  every  reason 
to  be  ashamed  of  its  house  of  detention.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  a  piquant  contrast  to  observe  its 
treatment  of  the  boys  who  have  been  found 
guilty.  For  them  St.  Louis  has  a  farm,  at  Belle- 
fontaine,  which  exhibits  none  of  the  insensibility  of 
the  industrial  schools  of  England.  Here  no  prison 
bars,  no  watchmen,  no  measures  against  escape 
at  night,  except  the  removal  of  day  clothes.  A 
gifted  superintendent  has  done  a  great  deal  to 
prevent  the  place  from  turning  into  an  institution. 
There  are  no  uniforms;  the  dining  room  is  painted 
white,  decorated  with  flowers,  pictures,  and  flags. 
Three  hours  a  day  are  given  to  school,  four  or  five 
to  agriculture,  two  to  recreation  within  the  bounds 
of  the  estate.  The  tragedy  of  Bellefontaine  is  that 
the  boys  stay  there  only  six  months  to  two  years, 
and  then  go  back  to  the  bad  old  homes  which  made 
their  crimes.  It  is  to  the  honor  of  St.  Louis  that 
one  regrets  that  its  delinquent  boys  cannot  up  to 
manhood  be  kept  in  its  institution. 

In  other  words,  America  is  really  trying  to  cure, 
to  reform,  and  not  merely  to  punish.  You  see  this 
at  its  maximum  in  Sing  Sing  prison.  As  you  travel 
along  the  lovely  wooded  hills  of  the  Hudson  you 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  213 

prepare  for  cells  and  gray  gloom,  but  as  you  reach 
the  prison  you  hear  a  band  and  you  see  men 
marching.  Later  you  ask  whether  those  men 
evolving  in  the  large  and  tidy  walled  space  were 
marching  to  dinner;  you  are  told  that  they  were 
marching  more  or  less  of  their  own  accord,  for 
exercise,  behind  the  band  they  organize  and  man- 
age themselves.  Then  you  discover  that  their  uni- 
form is  not  entirely  uniform;  that  they  can  wear 
part  of  their  own  clothes,  have  tobacco  and  daily 
papers  sent  in;  that  five  times  a  month  they  may 
receive  three  visitors,  making  fifteen,  and  that  they 
can  talk  to  them  in  a  large  room,  uninterrupted  by 
officers,  unseparated  by  the  terrible  grille  of  the 
past.  You  go  into  the  workshops  where  they 
work  an  ordinary  eight-hour  day,  making  shoes, 
brushes,  mattresses,  or  at  printing,  etc.  There  are 
no  officers  in  the  workshops;  the  convicts  run  their 
own  discipline.  In  the  dining  room  also  no  offi- 
cers, but  again  the  men's  own  discipline.  They 
may  talk;  they  are  not,  as  in  England,  treated  as 
dumb  brutes.  You  discover  the  prison  club  (the 
Mutual  Welfare  League),  games,  movie  shows,  a 
monthly  paper  that  was  edited,  published,  and 
printed  within  the  prison  under  the  editorship  of  Mr. 
C.  E.  Chapin,  a  prominent  journalist,  now  serving  a 
life  sentence.    You  go  round;  you  hear  the  warden 

address  the  prisoners  personally;  they  reply  with- 
in 


2i4  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

out  fear  or  servility.  Those  who  are  not  at  work 
move  about  freely  in  the  vast  prison;  others  prac- 
tice baseball.  The  essence  of  Sing  Sing  is  repre- 
sented by  two  mottoes — self-government  and  no 
officers.  The  idea  is  to  thrust  upon  the  convicts 
the  maximum  amount  of  personal  responsibility, 
which  prevents  them  from  feeling  outcast,  and 
maintains  their  individuality  for  the  time  when 
they  will  return  to  the  outer  world.  That  is  why 
there  are  no  officers  in  the  workshops,  why  the  offi- 
cers are  unarmed,  while  the  prisoners  freely  handle 
piping  and  knives.  They  are  trusted;  they  under- 
stand that  they  must  go  through  with  this,  that 
escape  is  very  difficult;  so  many  are  allowed  com- 
parative freedom  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  prison 
under  the  languid  supervision  of  a  lonely  guard. 
Breakaways  are  very  few.  I  suppose  the  reaction- 
ary will  say,  "Very  pretty;  this  means  that  you 
are  treating  criminals  as  honest  men  would  like  to 
be  treated."  That  is  absurd.  Even  in  Sing  Sing, 
model  prison  though  it  be,  there  is  not  much 
laughter;  stone  walls  do  make  a  prison,  however 
much  an  enlightened  civilization  may  try  to  pre- 
vent it.  Before  dismissing  the  humane  effort  of 
Sing  Sing,  the  reactionary  should  ask  himself 
whether  he  would  like  to  lead  the  life  of  those  men. 
It  is  a  hard  place,  and  behind  the  benevolence 
stand  force,  restraint,  and  a  ready  weapon.    But 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  215 

all  this  is  hidden  as  well  as  may  be,  so  that  the 
convict  may  feel  comparatively  free,  be  given  a 
chance  to  acquire  the  capacities  of  a  trade,  the 
powers  of  a  free  man,  pending  the  time  when  he  will 
regain  the  privileges  of  freedom.  Sing  Sing  repre- 
sents one  of  the  most  beautiful  sides  of  the  Amer- 
ican character,  the  capacity  of  the  strong  man  to 
understand  the  weak,  the  desire  to  give  the  weak 
man  a  fair  deal,  the  desire  to  make  him  efficient 
again,  to  restore  him  to  decency;  in  other  words, 
to  rescue  an  American  from  evil  courses  and  to  re- 
absorb him  into  the  American  community. 

After  leaving  Sing  Sing  I  thought  of  the  English 
prisons,  of  the  periods  of  solitary  confinement, 
where  the  convict  sees  no  human  face,  hardly  that 
of  a  warder;  of  the  gangs  on  Dartmoor,  watched 
by  a  guard  with  a  rifle.  I  thought  of  our  prisoners 
cut  off  for  years  from  the  activity  of  the  world,  and 
then  tossed  back  to  wander  there  like  lost  children, 
until  they  meet  some  one  who  entices  them  back  to 
evil  courses,  because  that  is  all  the  English  prison 
has  fitted  them  for.  Then  again  I  thought  of  the 
American  prison,  and  was  ashamed  of  my  country. 

I  wonder  whether  the  fine  institutions  of  Amer- 
ica are  the  work  of  politicians  or  whether  they 
were  imposed  by  an  intelligent  public  opinion  upon 
representatives  who  threw  them  as  sops  to  local 
idealism.    One  cannot  help  contrasting  those  insti- 


216  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

tutions  with  the  evil  repute  of  the  American  poli- 
tician, and  especially  with  the  contempt  which 
most  Americans  openly  express  for  their  governors. 
Perhaps  the  American  politician  is  maligned;  very 
likely  he  is  corrupt,  but  maybe  all  politicians,  taken 
in  the  mass,  are  corrupt.  If  you  talk  to  an  edu- 
cated Frenchman,  Italian,  Spaniard,  or  Portu- 
guese he  will  tell  you  that  his  politicians  take 
bribes.  The  European  papers  contain  as  many 
scandals  and  exposures  of  people  in  high  places  as 
do  the  American  papers.  As  for  England,  she 
seems  very  virtuous,  and  the  superficial  observer 
may  think  that  the  level  of  political  morality  is 
higher  in  England  than  anywhere  else  in  the 
world.  Only,  when  one  begins  to  understand  Eng- 
lish public  life,  one  discovers  that,  as  usual,  every 
man  has  his  price,  and  that  whereas  in  most  parts 
of  the  world  you  can  get  a  man  to  do  something 
mean  by  paying  him  a  sum  of  money,  in  England 
you  can  bring  him  down  to  the  vilest  level  by  invit- 
ing him  to  lunch  with  a  duke.  And  so  there  is 
little  to  choose  between  corruption  by  contract  in 
the  United  States  of  America  and  corruption  by 
snobbery  in  the  home  of  ancient  liberties  which  we 
call  England. 

What  is  interesting  in  America,  as  opposed  to 
England,  is  the  common  assumption  that  the  poli- 
tician is  a  corruptionist.     In  many  conversations 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  217 

with  Americans  I  have  been  told  stories  which  I 
refuse  to  reprint  because  they  seem  too  wild.  I 
have  continually  been  told  that  the  American  law 
courts  are  corrupt,  that  many  of  the  judges  can  be 
bought,  and  that  where  they  cannot  be  bought 
political  pressure  can  be  put  on  them.  I  do  not  say 
this  is  true  or  untrue;  I  know  nothing  about  it 
personally,  but  what  interests  me  is  the  fact  that 
America  says  these  things  openly,  whereas  the 
Englishman  looks  upon  his  Parliament  as  the  abode 
of  most  of  the  virtues  (he  has  been  changing  his 
mind  since  big  business  took  over  the  British 
Empire,  round  about  1917);  also  he  becomes  pain- 
fully sentimental  when  he  talks  of  British  justice. 
The  American  seems  to  have  no  illusions  about  the 
state;  indeed,  when  one  has  read  the  American 
newspapers  for  a  few  months,  and  seen  them  filled 
with  extraordinary  tales  of  graft  taken  by  high 
employees  of  corporations,  by  district  attorneys, 
sanitary  trustees,  etc.,  one  begins  to  believe  that 
American  rule  is  founded  on  graft;  one  has  to 
reason  with  oneself  to  realize  that  the  greatest  and 
richest  nation  in  the  world  cannot  be  erected  on 
such  a  foundation. 

For  my  part,  I  suspect  that  the  situation  is 
actually  this:  most  of  the  public  officials  are 
elected;  therefore  they  have  to  truckle  to  local 
Qoinion,  for  they  hope  to  be  re-elected.  This  must 


218  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

mean  corrupt  favoritism.  In  many  cases,  however, 
the  situation  is  worse  because  the  public  official 
not  only  has  to  be  re-elected  by  a  body  of  constitu- 
ents, but  he  also  is  the  nominee  of  either  the 
Democratic  or  the  Republican  party.  He  will 
naturally  cleave  to  his  party;  its  managers  will 
have  influence  upon  him;  if  he  does  not  satisfy 
them,  he  will  not  be  renominated.  It  is  too  much 
to  ask  of  a  human  being  that  he  should  resist  an 
influence  such  as  that.  Lastly,  the  public  official 
is,  in  America,  very  ill  paid;  many  state  governors 
before  the  war  received  less  than  six  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  their  pay  has  not  been  raised  commen- 
surately  with  the  rise  in  the  cost  of  living.  If  you 
compare  rank  with  rank  you  will  find  that  the 
American  judge  is  paid  about  a  quarter  of  what  the 
English  judge  receives,  and  this  in  a  country 
where  the  cost  of  living  is  twice  as  high  as  in 
England.  What  is  the  result  ?  It  is  not  necessarily 
corruption.  Indeed,  the  American  judge  deserves 
a  tribute  which  he  does  not  always  receive  for 
resisting  corruption  offered  to  poverty.  I  think  it 
was  Oscar  Wilde  who  said  that  "anybody  could  be 
virtuous  on  ten  thousand  pounds  a  year."  The 
most  supreme  of  the  American  judges  has  never 
received  such  a  salary,  but  he  has  been  virtuous  all 
the  same. 

A  more  serious  result  is  that  in  a  civilization  such 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  219 

as  the  American,  where  wealth  absolutely  pre- 
dominates, where  a  man's  status  is  largely  (though 
not  entirely)  defined  by  his  fortune,  the  rewards 
of  office  are  so  small  that  public  positions  tend  to 
attract  only  those  men  who  would  not  otherwise 
make  a  very  good  living,  or  men  who  are  already 
rich,  and  take  office  out  of  vanity. 

Nearly  all  the  educated  Americans  I  spoke  to 
about  this  entirely  agreed  with  me,  but  the  subject 
did  not  excite  them.  Everybody  acknowledged 
graft  everywhere,  with  a  way  of  suggesting,  "It's 
a  pity,  but  it  can't  be  helped."  I  suspect  that 
America  does  not  worry  about  graft  because  she  is 
a  pioneer  country,  because  she  is  still  developing 
her  immense  resources,  and  especially  because  the 
opportunities  are  so  vast  that  every  man  tells  him- 
self that  he  has  quite  enough  to  do  looking  after  his 
business  without  wasting  time  on  the  reform  of 
the  public  services.  He  agrees  that  much  time 
and  money  are  wasted  by  corruption,  but  he  figures 
out  the  situation  and  tells  himself  that  the  loss 
entailed  on  him  personally  is  much  less  than  the 
loss  he  would  make  if  he  were  to  devote  time  to 
public  affairs.  So  he  lets  public  affairs  go,  gets  as 
rich  as  he  can;  often  he  harbors  the  private  opinion 
that  if  he  comes  to  a  lawsuit  the  best  thing  he  can 
do  is  to  be  rich.  To  be  rich,  he  thinks,  will  serve 
him  better  than  to  be  a  little  poorer  and  come 


220  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

before  an  entirely  reliable  court.  I  do  not  mean 
that  he  proposes  to  bribe  the  law,  but  he  proposes 
by  his  wealth  to  avail  himself  of  every  delay,  of 
every  legal  method,  and  to  wear  out  his  antagonist. 
To  do  that  he  must  be  rich;  also  he  finds  getting 
rich  a  more  cheerful  pursuit  than  purifying  the 
public  services. 

You  see  this  political  indifference  more  clearly 
still  when  you  consider  the  treatment  afforded  to 
the  Socialist  party  in  America.  One  quite  under- 
stands that  during  the  war  the  American  govern- 
ment should  have  dealt  very  vigorously  with  those 
who  opposed  its  activities,  who  tried  to  impede 
recruiting,  and  in  some  cases  plotted  with  the 
enemy.  I  take  no  sides  in  this  matter,  except  so 
far  as  to  say  that  the  leaders  of  most  of  the  Allies 
cannot  escape  their  share  of  responsibility  for  the 
crime  that  is  unjustly  imputed  to  the  Kaiser  alone. 
I  quite  understand  that  when  a  government  has 
gone  to  war  it  can  hold  only  the  opinion  of  Decatur, 
"My  country,  right  or  wrong."  But  what  is  in- 
teresting is  the  indifference  of  public  opinion  to 
the  treatment  of  the  Socialists  after  the  war.  In 
the  fear  of  revolution  a  great  many  things  were 
done  which  did  not  accord  with  our  conception  of 
the  habeas  corpus.  I  have  before  me  a  photo- 
graph of  a  letter  addressed  to  the  editor  of  The 
Leader,  Milwaukee,  stamped  October,  1920.  Across 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  221 

the  envelope  is  impressed,  "Mail  to  this  address 
undeliverable  under  Espionage  Act."  Therefore, 
nearly  two  years  after  the  armistice,  a  newspaper 
is  refused  its  mail  because  its  views  are  disagreeable 
to  the  government!  The  letter  is  reproduced  in 
the  New  York  World,  which  very  honorably  pro- 
tests against  this  suppression  of  a  normal  public 
right,  the  delivery  of  correspondence.  But  I  never 
heard  club  or  private  talk  about  this.  This  flagrant 
attack  on  citizen  rights  seemed  to  interest  nobody. 
And  here  are  a  number  of  other  cases  which  also 
occurred  in  October,  1920.  At  Mount  Vernon  the 
Rev.  John  Haynes  Holmes,  Miss  Rose  Schneider- 
mann,  candidate  for  Senator,  and  Mr.  Norman 
Thomas  were  arrested  for  attempting  to  read  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  explaining 
the  objects  of  the  American  Civil  Liberties  Union. 
This  because  they  were  speaking  without  a  permit 
from  the  mayor,  who  had  declined  to  give  permits 
to  speakers.  On  October  12th,  at  Norwich,  Mrs. 
Glendowen  Evans  and  Mr.  Albert  Boardman  were 
arrested  for  speaking  in  breach  of  the  orders  of 
the  mayor.  In  the  same  month  Judge  John  C. 
Knox  decided  that  membership  of  the  Communist 
party  was  sufficient  cause  for  deportation.  (It  is 
interesting  to  observe  that  Judge  Anderson,  at 
Boston,  ruled  the  opposite.)  Again,  in  the  same 
month,  at  New  York,  the  Socialists  were  denied 


222  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

the  privilege  of  choosing  poll  clerks  for  election 
districts  in  which  their  party  had  polled  the  great- 
est or  the  next  to  greatest  vote  cast  at  the  last  elec- 
tion. All  these  cases  are  fairly  startling,  but  most 
remarkable  is  that  of  the  five  Socialists,  members 
of  the  New  York  Legislature,  who  in  March,  1920, 
were  excluded  on  the  plea  that  they  had  been 
seditious.  A  minority,  duly  elected  by  the  voters, 
was  excluded  by  the  majority.  The  five  outlaws 
stood  again,  and  in  September,  1920,  were  all  five 
again  elected  by  their  constituents.  You  would 
have  thought  that  this  settled  the  matter,  since 
they  were  twice  indorsed  by  the  electorate,  but 
the  New  York  Legislature  accepted  two  of  the 
members  and  re-excluded  three.  This  was  not  a 
party  vote,  for  on  the  second  occasion  73  Repub- 
licans and  17  Democrats  voted  for  exclusion,  while 
28  Republicans  and  17  Democrats  voted  against. 

I  submit  that,  coming  two  years  after  the  war, 
this  is  a  rather  startling  situation.  It  justifies  one 
in  suggesting  that  liberty  of  speech  and  of  thought 
was  brought  very  low  during  the  four  years  of  the 
Wilson  administration;  so  far  there  is  no  definite 
guarantee  that  these  liberties  will  be  restored 
under  the  new  government.  This  because  no- 
body bothers  about  it.  All  the  people  who  were 
arrested  for  expounding  socialistic  views  were 
doing   this   openly,   and   in  virtue  of  the  rights 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  223 

that  belong  to  all  citizens  in  a  free  republic.  I 
heard  of  no  case  where  a  Republican  or  Demo- 
cratic speaker  was  arrested;  the  Socialists  were 
arrested  because  they  wanted  to  alter  the  form  of 
the  State.  But  it  is  perfectly  legitimate  to  alter 
the  form  of  the  State  if  you  don't  like  it;  it  is 
perfectly  legitimate  to  try  to  convince  your  fel- 
low men  that  your  views  are  right  and  that  they 
should  join  with  you  in  making  them  prevail. 
Supposing  a  party  were  to  arise  which  wanted  to 
make  it  compulsory  on  all  of  us  to  paint  ourselves 
blue  (basing  this  on  the  excellent  historical  prece- 
dent of  Queen  Boadicea),  you  might  think  it  silly, 
but  all  the  same  the  pro-blues  would  be  entitled  to 
recruit  members  for  their  party.  Any  suppression 
of  opinion  is  tyranny.  In  the  particular  case  of 
the  New  York  Legislature,  which  excluded  the 
five  Socialists,  it  is  interesting  to  observe  that  the 
protests  against  this  high-handed  action  soon 
died  down.  The  exclusion  did  not  form  a  topic 
for  conversation  at  lunch;  if  it  was  referred  to  at 
all,  the  general  attitude  was  that  it  served  the 
Socialists  jolly  well  right,  and  it  was  hoped  that 
this  would  "learn"  them  to  be  Socialists.  Which 
is  all  very  well,  but  if  we  accept  that  a  majority 
may  deprive  a  minority  of  its  constitutional  rights, 
then  no  man  will  be  safe — unless  he  belongs  to  the 
majority.     If,  owing  to  unfortunate  idealism  or 


224  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

lack  of  political  suppleness,  he  happens  to  find 
himself  in  the  minority,  he  will  be  in  trouble. 
These  suppressions  and  exclusions  practiced  by 
a  capitalistic  government  absolutely  parallel  the 
action  of  the  Bolsheviks  in  Moscow.  The  Bol- 
sheviks are  charged  with  having  disfranchised  all 
the  people  who  did  not  agree  with  them,  and  for 
that  are  severely  attacked;  the  capitalistic  parties 
of  America  in  these  particular  cases  have  been  doing 
just  the  same  thing.  They  must  not  expect  to 
be  measured  by  a  different  rule. 

I  am  not  making  an  impertinent  comparison 
between  the  American  and  the  British  methods. 
It  is  true  that  England  allows  almost  unlimited 
freedom  of  speech,  printing,  and  meeting,  and  that 
has  a  beautiful  air  of  liberalism,  but  I  suspect  that 
the  English  governing  class,  which  is  wholly  cyn- 
ical and  much  more  subtle  than  most  people  realize, 
has  for  a  long  time  seen  the  advantage  of  letting 
people  talk,  and  talk,  and  wear  themselves  away, 
and  evaporate  in  talk.  Where  America  represses, 
England  swaddles.  One  of  these  days  an  English 
Prime  Minister  will  try  to  smash  the  Socialist 
movement  by  offering  peerages  to  the  labor  leaders 
and  bishoprics  to  the  Socialist  clergymen.  So  I 
am  not  making  a  comparison;  what  I  am  observing 
is  the  psychological  reaction  of  the  American  mind 
to  this  political   tyranny.     It   is   a   simple  one; 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  225 

America  does  not  bother,  and  she  may  be  unwise 
not  to  bother,  for  suppression  drives  these  move- 
ments into  secrecy.  During  the  Russian  revolu- 
tion of  1905  Pobiedonostzeff,  a  reactionary,  said 
that  an  idea  was  more  dangerous  than  dynamite; 
you  can  hide  an  idea,  but  you  cannot  kill  it,  and 
all  that  the  system  of  repression  can  do  is  just 
that,  to  hide  the  idea.  Reaction  does  not  take  the 
advice  of  Mr.  Joseph  Chamberlain,  who  once  said 
that  you  cannot  stop  a  storm  by  sitting  on  the 
barometer.  Reaction  is  to-day  trying  to  sit  on 
the  barometer,  and  I  suspect  that  this  is  more 
dangerous  than  hanging  the  barometer  outside 
Westminster  Abbey,  while  the  plaudits  of  Eng- 
ish  Liberalism  resound.  The  American  Commu- 
nist party,  organized  in  September,  1919,  worked 
openly  until  January,  1920,  when  a  number  of 
arrests  were  made;  then  the  party  became  illegal 
and  began  to  work  underground.  There,  I  feel, 
lies  such  danger  to  American  political  stability  as 
may  exist.  Political  repression  has  created  secret 
societies;  so  long  as  they  are  secret,  so  long  will 
they  be  dangerous.  Revolutionary  and  violent  sec- 
tions of  the  Socialist  party  never  grow  strong  until 
repression  forces  them  to  work  secretly,  because 
the  preaching  of  violence  never  rallies  to  their  side 
anything  but  a  small  number  of  people.  Violence 
is  disagreeable  to  most  of  mankind  because  it  is 


226  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

risky.  Man  likes  violence  well  enough,  but  he  un- 
derstands that  violence  replies  to  violence;  he  is 
not  prepared  to  face  that  side  of  it.  Therefore,  free 
speech  leads  to  moderation,  because  moderation 
makes  recruits;  on  the  other  hand,  limit  the  free- 
dom of  speech,  you  foster  secrecy,  sense  of  injury — 
above  all,  the  romantic  sense  of  outlawry;  you 
produce  groups  of  individuals  who  become  more 
revolutionary  because  they  feel  outcast,  who  plot 
violence  and  more  violence — because  it  is  the 
dramatic  thing  to  do. 

I  found  very  few  people  in  America  who  cared 
at  all  about  these  things.  The  political  apathy  of 
America  is  extraordinary.  There  is  no  care  for 
abstract  rights,  but  only  for  individual  rights.  For 
instance,  after  the  presidential  election  in  1920,  day 
by  day — not  only  in  New  York,  but  in  Indianapolis, 
in  Chicago,  in  other  places — I  tried  to  discover  the 
total  votes  polled  by  the  Farmer  Labor  party  and 
by  the  Socialists.  It  was  almost  impossible  to  find 
out;  at  first  I  was  told  that  these  polls  were  so 
negligible  that  they  were  not  worth  printing;  in 
the  end  I  discovered  that  the  Socialists  had  polled 
just  under  a  million  votes,  and  that  Mr.  Upton 
Sinclair  alone  had  received  twenty  thousand  in 
California,  but  I  had  to  take  trouble  to  find  out, 
and  I  never  met  anybody  else  who  wanted  to  know. 
To  this  day  I  do  not  know  how  many  votes  Mr. 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  227 

Christensen  polled.  Now  a  bright  public  opinion 
would  want  to  know  these  things.  Why  it  doesn't 
want  to  I  am  not  certain.  Perhaps  it  is  the  pre- 
vailing political  cynicism  which  reigns  in  the  coun- 
try, a  cynicism  which  was  summed  up  in  an  old 
English  election  song: 

If  we  put  the  muddlers  out, 
We  put  worse  muddlers  in. 

Perhaps  it  is,  as  I  have  suggested  before,  that  the 
American  is  much  too  busy  with  his  personal 
affairs  to  trouble  with  those  of  the  State,  except, 
of  course,  as  regards  the  cock  fight  of  party  against 
party.  For  it  should  be  noted  that  when  one 
charges  the  American  with  political  apathy  one 
must  except  the  sporting  side  of  the  political  con- 
tests. That  is  very  definite.  There  is  nothing 
apathetic  in  the  way  in  which  the  white  South  votes 
Democrat  because  the  negro  votes  Republican; 
in  the  disfranchisement  of  negroes  by  every  kind 
of  trick;  in  the  Ku-Klux  Klan  proceedings.  There 
is  nothing  languid  in  the  100-per-cent  Americanism 
of  the  American  Legion;  nor  in  the  anti-Catholic 
campaign  of  the  "True  Americans "  in  the  South; 
nor  in  the  keyhole  activities,  the  witch-finding  of 
the  American  Protective  League.  There  is  in 
America  as  much  political  violence  as  will  keep 
even  an  Irishman  busy,  but  it  is  a  local,  a  sporting, 


228  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

a  personal  violence.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with 
general  ideas.  No  doubt  that  is  part  of  American 
regionalism,  which  has  made  the  country  as  a 
whole  so  important  and  the  State  so  slight  in  the 
mind  of  the  citizens  of  what  is  less  a  great  free 
republic  than  a  great  federation  of  free  republics. 

Though  this  suggestion  may  arouse  protest,  I  do 
not  feel  sure  that  in  America  a  war  against  England 
would  be  unpopular.  War  in  general  has  never 
been  unpopular  in  America,  though  the  inhabitants 
seem  to  hold  the  view  that  they  are  the  most 
pacific  of  men.  They  are,  so  long  as  they  get 
everything  their  own  way,  so  long  as  their  national 
honor,  of  which  they  are  very  jealous,  is  wholly 
respected,  so  long  as  they  secure  their  position  of 
international  isolation,  so  long  as  the  old  continent 
keeps  its  hands  off  the  new.  The  pacific  record  of 
the  United  States  of  America  in  the  last  century 
includes  an  expedition  in  Barbary,  a  war  against 
England,  a  war  against  Mexico,  a  terrific  civil  war, 
a  war  against  Spain.  This  record  for  a  pacific 
nation  is  not  at  all  bad.  I  do  not  suggest  that 
Americans  are  born  belligerents,  but  they  might  be 
if  they  were  not  so  difficult  to  beat. 

No  doubt  a  certain  kind  of  American  who  reads 
these  lines  will  laugh  aloud,  and  will  vow  that 
nothing  could  bring  into  conflict  two  nations  whose 
common  blood  and  community  of  tradition,  etc. — 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  229 

and  all  that  kind  of  thing.  I  would  point  out  to 
him  three  things.  One  is  that  there  is  to-day  much 
less  community  of  blood  between  England  and 
America  than  there  was  between  England  and 
Germany;  the  second  is  that  community  of  blood 
is  no  guarantee  against  strife — the  spectacle  of  fam- 
ily life  should  prove  that  point;  the  third  is  that 
while  it  might  have  been  true  a  hundred  years 
ago  to  talk  of  community  of  tradition  between 
America  and  England,  to  do  so  to-day  is  merely 
hypocrisy  or  ignorance.  During  my  journey  in 
America  I  met,  especially  in  the  East,  many  people 
who  bore  English  or  Scottish  names,  and  whose 
families  traced  their  pedigrees  right  back  to  the 
early  Puritans  or  Virginians;  I  also  met  many 
who  did  not  bother  about  their  pedigree,  who  were 
still  very  British  in  feeling  and  culture.  They 
were  all  very  friendly  to  England,  and  all  shocked 
by  the  idea  of  war.  One  can  broadly  say  that 
cultured  America  is  pro-British.  Only — what  does 
cultured  America  matter?  What  does  cultured 
anything  matter  anywhere  in  a  world  where  more 
and  more  the  bank  balance  and  the  political  caucus 
alone  have  voices?  As  I  went  about,  meeting 
these  charming  people,  old  Pennsylvanians,  Bos- 
tonians,  people  of  Vermont  and  Ohio,  not  many  of 
them  very  rich,  hardly  any  very  active,  most  of 
them  remote  from  New  York  and  almost  unaware 

16 


23o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

of  Chicago,  I  could  not  help  feeling  that  here  I 
was  meeting  not  America,  but  surviving  America, 
an  America  which  for  two  reasons  has  ceased  to 
mean  anything — one,  that  it  has  not  got  richer 
while  the  Middle  West  did;  the  other,  that  it  has 
withdrawn  from,  or  been  pushed  out  of,  politics. 

The  divorce  between  culture  and  politics  defines 
the  Anglo-American  danger.  The  old  American 
families  who  made  the  Constitution  have  by  de- 
grees been  driven  out  of  politics,  because  the  great 
mass  of  Irish,  Slav,  German,  and  Scandinavian 
immigrants  preferred  their  own  people  as  political 
bosses.  Corruption  followed,  and  the  old  American 
families,  instead  of  staying  in  the  political  field, 
drew  their  ladylike  skirts  away.  Sometimes  even 
now  they  make  a  feeble  effort  and  stand  for  polit- 
ical office.  As  a  rule,  they  are  beaten  by  a  recent 
O'Brien;  they  are  beaten  because  they  are  not 
tackling  the  job.  They  seem  to  think  it  enough  to 
put  upon  their  poster  a  name  from  the  Mayflower  y 
but  they  do  not  join  the  political  clubs,  do  not 
enter  the  ward  committees;  they  stay  grand  and 
aristocratic  like  the  English  country  gentleman, 
and  are  surprised  when  they  are  not  elected.  The 
English  country  gentleman  can  afford  to  do  that 
(though  he  will  not  long  be  able  to  afford  to) 
because  he  is  addressing  Englishmen;  the  Amer- 
ican gentleman  cannot  do  that  because  he  is  not 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  231 

addressing  Americans.  He  is  addressing  a  Euro- 
pean constituency  as  mixed  as  Constantinople;  he 
is  addressing  poverty,  ambition,  religious  strife, 
race  hatred,  resentment  against  the  oppression  of 
Kaiser  and  Tsar,  diseases  brought  about  by  cen- 
turies of  hunger;  he  is  addressing  everything  ex- 
cept the  broad  comfort  of  Old  America  and  its  sim- 
ple rectitudes.  Naturally  he  does  not  get  in,  and 
the  control  of  politics  falls  to  another  type  of  man. 
What  that  type  is  matters  only  in  so  far  as  it  is 
much  more  subservient  to  the  electors  than  would 
be  the  gentleman  of  Connecticut  or  Carolina. 
Those  electors — who  are  they?  During  the  last 
half  century  America  has  admitted  thirty  million 
Europeans,  of  whom  perhaps  a  sixth  were  English 
or  Scotch.  The  great  mass  are  Slav,  Irish,  or 
Italian.  Those  people  have  no  links  with  England; 
their  traditions  are  different,  also  their  way  of  life, 
their  religion,  their  literature.  They  are  intelli- 
gent, commercially  successful,  but  there  lives  in 
their  heart  no  sentiment  for  the  fatherland  over  the 
water.  And  among  them,  animating  them,  em- 
bodying the  protest  of  Europe,  are  the  Irish,  ani- 
mated with  hatred  against  England  by  all  the 
injustice  and  oppression  they  have  suffered  at  her 
hands,  filled  with  memories  of  Protestant  tyranny 
and  irreconcilable  with  the  beef  eaters,  because 
they  themselves  grew  up  on  potatoes.    The  Irish 


232  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

serve  as  the  cement  of  the  immigrant  nationalities; 
they  bring  the  political  aptitude,  the  faculty  for 
organization,  and  the  hate  which  binds  men  to- 
gether so  much  better  than  does  love.  That  is 
what  one  must  realize  in  considering  political  Amer- 
ica. The  voting  power  has  slipped  away  from  the 
old  Americans,  and  the  new  Americans  are  not 
Americans. 

I  suppose  I  shall  be  told  that  America  is  capable 
of  absorbing  any  man  who  enters,  whether  Syrian 
or  Laplander.  Regarding  my  first  chapter  on  Bos- 
ton I  received  an  indignant  letter  from  a  New- 
Englander  in  Chicago  who  told  me  that  I  did  not 
know  what  I  was  talking  about  and  that  the  old 
Puritan  traditions  had  imposed  themselves  upon 
the  immigrants.  It  made  one  laugh,  coming  from 
a  town  where  nine  women  were  murdered  in  one 
week,  where  bank  messengers  are  held  up  in  day- 
light, where  moral  scandals  overflow  from  the  hush 
cupboard  into  the  newspapers.  The  truth  is  that 
up  to  a  certain  point  America  was  capable  of  acting 
as  a  melting  pot.  But  there  is  a  limit  to  what  a 
population  can  absorb,  and  though,  no  doubt,  up 
to  the  middle  of  last  century  the  old  American 
stock  was  strong  and  numerous  enough  to  absorb 
the  immigrant,  now  the  immigrant  is  the  majority; 
by  degrees  it  will  absorb  the  American  stock  in- 
stead of  being  absorbed  by  it.    You  can  see  that 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  233 

in  the  foreign  quarters  of  the  American  cities, 
where,  block  by  block,  the  nation  changes,  where 
you  find  areas  exclusively  tenanted  by,  let  us  say, 
Italians,  who  have  imported  their  restaurants, 
their  dishes,  their  kind  of  barber,  their  newspaper, 
their  church.  You  see  it  still  more  in  the  public 
lists  of  marriages.  You  do  not  often  find  Carlo 
Ferrari  marrying  Bella  Jones.  Carlo  Ferrari  is 
marrying  Maria  Sorino.  He  is  keeping  up  a  purity 
of  race  which  makes  absorption  impossible.  When 
you  reflect  that  immigration  this  year  will  prob- 
ably exceed  American  births,  and  that  many  of 
these  births  are  foreign  births,  you  will  agree  that 
the  balance  is  tipped. 

In  those  populations  you  find  a  field  where  can 
grow  hostility  to  any  nation.  Moreover,  the  ex- 
ploitation of  hatred  of  England  stands  almost 
where  it  did  in  1776.  You  see  this  come  out 
in  the  most  amazing  ways.  For  instance,  dur- 
ing the  presidential  election,  the  Farmer -Labor 
party  had  a  committee  room  on  Eighth  Avenue, 
at  135th  Street.  Outside  stood  a  poster  which 
read,  "Cox  and  Harding  suit  Wall  Street  and 
England.  Do  they  suit  you?"  I  interrogated 
a  friend  about  this,  and  asked  him  how  the 
Farmer-Labor  party,  practically  a  radical  party, 
which  must  have  some  international  leanings, 
could  do  such  a  thing.     He  replied:    "Oh,  don't 


234  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

you  bother  about  that.  They've  got  nothing 
against  England,  but  it's  always  a  good  election 
card  to  play."  I  think  that  reply  fatal.  Is  it  any- 
thing but  fatal  to  hear  that  in  America  thousands 
of  votes  can  be  secured  if  you  "play  the  card"  of 
hostility  to  England?  And  yet  it  is  true.  There 
we  must  leave  it;  there  is  no  room  for  a  convention 
leading  to  an  entente  cordiale,  because  there  are  no 
issues.  Maybe  President  Harding's  court  of  arbi- 
tration may  do  something  to  arrest  the  difficulties 
which  may  arise.  Possibly  the  removal  of  the  Irish 
question,  which  must  inevitably  come,  may  do 
something  to  change  the  atmosphere;  but  it  is  no 
use  pretending  that  things  are  as  they  should  be, 
for  the  awakening  might  be  very  unpleasant. 

The  first  time  I  asked  an  American  what  he 
thought  of  prohibition  I  chanced  upon  a  stranger 
in  that  particular  city  who  replied:  "Oh,  I'm  for 
prohibition.  Can  you  tell  me  where  I  can  get  a 
drink  ?"  This  reply  seems  to  embody  agood  deal  of 
the  public  feeling  in  the  matter.  Apart  from  a  few 
people  who  need  their  drink,  and  are  exasperated  by 
the  difficulties  they  encounter,  nearly  everybody  in 
America  thinks  prohibition  a  very  good  thing  for 
other  people.  It  should  be  said  in  justice  that  a 
good  many  agree  that  it  is  good  for  them,  thought 
they  don't  like  it,  and  that  they  are  willing  to  stand 
it.    It  is  generally  said  that  prohibition  was  brought 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  235 

about  by  political  trickery,  by  the  extension  of  a 
law  instituted  for  war  purposes,  but  that  is  not 
true.  Prohibition  is  an  old  American  institution 
which  has  been  expanding  by  degrees,  state  by 
state,  for  a  great  many  years.  The  war  merely 
gave  it  the  final  impetus  that  enabled  it  to  secure 
the  necessary  majority  of  two  thrds,  and  there- 
fore Federal  application.  Prohibition  might  not 
have  come  about  if  a  referendum  had  been  taken, 
but  as  the  American  Constitution  does  not  provide 
for  a  referendum,  it  must  be  held  that  prohibition 
has  not  succeeded  in  two  thirds  of  the  states  with- 
out the  assent  of  a  more  than  sufficient  majority. 
Many  people  believe  that  prohibition  will  not  last 
long,  and  that  America  will  eventually  return  to 
some  sort  of  liquor  consumption,  probably  by  the 
extension  of  the  Volstead  Act — viz.,  by  the  raising 
of  the  quantity  of  alcohol  in  drinks  to  3  or  4  per 
cent.  They  also  believe  that  the  enormous  illegal 
traffic  in  liquor  may  bring  prohibition  into  such 
contempt  that  it  will  die  of  itself.  All  this  seems 
most  unlikely,  though  liquor  is  obtainable  in  any 
quantity  by  anybody  who  can  pay  the  price  and 
who  will  take  the  trouble.  For  instance,  in  Boston, 
in  October,  1920,  in  various  hotels  and  bars,  people 
were  accosted  by  runners  who  offered  to  sell  them 
drink;  in  the  same  city,  in  six  and  a  half  months, 
13,246  people  were  arrested  for  public  drunkenness, 


236  HAIL,   COLUMBIA! 

and  213  had  to  be  admitted  to  hospital  for  alcoholic 
excess.  The  cause  of  this  is  certainly  prohibition. 
Whereas  in  the  old  days  a  man  could  buy  a  drink 
and  leave  the  saloon,  he  now  finds  that  difficult, 
but  he  can  buy  a  bottle,  take  it  home,  and  prob- 
ably drink  most  of  it.  Complete  figures  are  not 
available,  but  it  seems  that  during  1920  one  of 
the  results  of  prohibition  was  to  decrease  the 
number  of  people  who  drank  moderately,  and  to 
drive  a  certain  number  of  moderate  drinkers  into 
the  drunken  ranks.  It  has  also  resulted  in  the 
preparation  of  noxious  beverages,  made  partly  of 
whisky  and  partly  of  wood  alcohol;  it  has  brought 
about  a  great  revival  of  home  brewing  and  home 
distilling;  at  one  time  the  demand  for  stills  was  so 
heavy  that  the  industry  had  to  set  up  a  waiting 
list.  It  has,  to  a  certain  extent,  encouraged  smug- 
gling from  Canada  and  Mexico.  It  has  also  created 
a  class  of  enforcement  agents,  who  are  not  numer- 
ous enough  to  do  their  work  properly,  and  some 
of  whom  are  necessarily  corrupt.  In  other  words, 
prohibition  has  left  a  great  deal  of  room  for  eva- 
sion, and  a  great  deal  of  evasion  is  going  on  now. 

By  the  side  of  evasion  also  go  substitutes.  One 
of  them  is  supposed  to  be  drugs,  but  I  doubt 
whether  this  peril  is  as  formidable  as  is  made  out. 
The  whisky  habit  and  the  cocaine  habit  are  very 
different  things;   the  first  js  convivial,  the  second 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  237 

solitary.  If  the  people  who  talk  of  the  drug  peril 
had  any  opportunity  of  coming  into  contact  with 
cocaine  or  morphia  maniacs,  they  would  know  that 
the  effect  is  quite  different.  It  is  quite  possible 
that  a  few  drunkards  have  taken  to  cocaine  be- 
cause they  had  to  have  something,  but,  so  far  as 
my  observation  goes,  most  of  the  people  who 
drank  moderately  have  taken  to  the  soda  fountain. 
Evasion  of  quite  another  kind  is  much  more  preva- 
lent, and  that  is  the  patent  medicine  containing 
alcohol.  I  have  before  me  the  labels  of  two  of 
these  patent  medicines.  One  of  them  contains  25 
per  cent  of  alcohol,  the  other  40  per  cent;  both 
are  labeled  to  that  effect.  Now  what  is  interesting 
is  that  neither  of  these  medicines  is  designed  for 
any  specific  disease;  they  are  not  supposed  to  do 
anything  for  you  if  you  have  rheumatism  or  fever. 
They  are  to  be  taken  as  a  tonic  if  you  feel  tired, 
or  depressed,  and  their  pleasant  taste  is  guaran- 
teed One  cannot  help  being  amused  by  that  kind 
of  thing.  I  took  a  dose  of  one  of  these  medicines 
and  found  it  very  nice  indeed.  I  felt  very  much 
better,  and  inclined  to  take  a  second  dose.  And 
so  on. 

As  regards  the  results  of  prohibition,  it  is  much 
too  early  to  say  anything  precise.  The  wildest 
statements  have  been  printed.  For  instance,  in 
November,  1920,  the  superintendent  of  the  Juvenile 


238  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

Protective  Association  read  out  statistics  which 
seemed  to  show  that  cases  of  cruelty  to  wife  and 
child  had  increased  238  per  cent  since  prohibition 
arrived;  similar  figures  seem  to  show  a  rise  in 
childish  delinquency,  in  immorality,  in  disorderly 
houses.  One  can  find  similar  figures  which  abso- 
lutely contradict  the  situation,  and  both  sets  are 
as  childish  one  as  the  other.  We  shall  know  noth- 
ing of  the  effects  of  prohibition  for  twenty  years, 
and  then  we  shall  judge  only  by  figures.  The 
psycho-sociologist  knows  that  statistics  are  merely 
lies  made  respectable.  My  own  belief  is  that  in 
the  United  States  of  America  liquor  will  practically 
disappear.  Liquor  is  to  a  certain  extent  sustained 
by  the  unpalatable  nature  of  the  prohibition  drinks; 
the  beer  is  nothing  but  a  ghost  of  the  real  beer; 
apple  cider,  loganberry  juice,  and  such  like  are  fit 
to  make  a  school-treat  sick.  The  only  good  pro- 
hibition drink  is  water.  But  the  resources  of  in- 
dustrial chemistry  will  by  degrees  produce  the  illu- 
sion we  need.  It  is  the  only  thing  we  need  in  life. 
Drink  itself  will  go  because  it  is  not  being  given  to 
the  young  generation.  That  is  not  only  a  question 
of  shame,  but  a  question  of  supply.  As  the  stocks 
go  down,  as  enforcement  grows  more  rigid,  drink 
will  grow  more  and  more  difficult  to  obtain.  The 
father  will  naturally  keep  it  for  himself,  and  a  vague 
sort  of  shame  will  prevent  him  from  introducing 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  239 

his  son  to  liquor.  So  the  young  generation  will 
grow  up  without  it,  not  wanting  what  it  does  not 
know;  by  degrees,  as  the  old  drinking  generation 
dies  out,  the  only  drunkards  will  be  people  afflicted 
by  a  new  kind  of  depravity,  who  will  drink  whisky 
as  they  now  snuff  cocaine.  They  will  be  the  excep- 
tion rather  than  the  rule.  Whether  this  result  is 
desirable  is  another  question;  for  my  part,  I  have 
always  held  that  the  ideal  state  is  the  one  where 
there  are  least  laws.  I  should  prefer  to  think  that 
the  saloon  system  could  be  moralized  and  made 
more  aesthetic;  that  education  could  by  degrees 
teach  the  population  to  use  instead  of  abusing; 
and  that  drink  could  remain  what  it  should  be,  a 
pleasure  and  not  a  vice.  All  this  seems  to  be  pos- 
sible, and  on  the  whole  I  regret  prohibition  because 
it  has  done  immense  damage  to  conviviality.  The 
entertainment  of  hard-worked  people  is  difficult 
without  the  stimulus  of  drink.  Prohibition  din- 
ner parties  are  very  dull;  a  dinner  party,  after  all, 
consists  in  bringing  together  people  who  don't  like 
one  another  much,  and  encouraging  them  to  bear 
with  one  another;  that  is  what  is  called  society. 
It  is  difficult  to  do  that  on  iced  water;  it  is  perhaps 
easier  in  America,  where  people  are  frank  and  con- 
fidential; in  England  the  social  consequences 
would  be  frightful.  We  have  been  asked  in  Eng- 
land to  choose  between  Giles  free  and  Giles  sober. 


24o  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

I  hope  we  shall  not  have  to  choose  between  Giles 
sober  and  Giles  sulky. 

In  a  sense,  the  prohibition  problem  is  simpli- 
fied by  the  growing  Slavification  and  Latinization 
of  the  United  States.  For  psychological  reasons  of 
a  complex  nature,  it  is  the  Anglo-Teutonic  and 
Scandinavian  peoples  who  carry  the  taste  for 
drink.  The  objections  to  immigration  may  be  con- 
siderable, but  drunkenness  is  not  one  of  them;  the 
Jewish  immigrant  is  particularly  free  from  the 
craving  for  drink.  This  does  not  mean  that  the 
immigration  problem  is  in  America  not  a  serious 
one.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  or  is  not  a  serious  problem 
according  to  the  point  of  view  you  may  hold.  The 
American  who  wants  to  preserve  the  Old  America, 
the  America  of  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Robert  E. 
Lee,  must  look  with  horror  upon  the  central  and 
eastern  European  masses;  the  American  who  is  will- 
ing to  see  created  an  entirely  new  race  should  not  be 
so  greatly  troubled.  At  present  the  old  American 
still  holds  sway  because  of  the  sentimental  sup- 
port of  literature  and  the  press.  It  is  not  won- 
derful that  public  opinion  should  be  agitated  about 
the  immigrant,  for  the  speed  of  immigration  is 
going  up  at  an  enormous  rate.  In  January,  1920, 
nearly  25,000  came  in;  in  June  nearly  50,000;  in 
September  86,000.  Also,  we  are  told  by  the  Com- 
missioner of  Immigration  that  10,000,000  of  for- 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  241 

eigners  are  waiting  for  ships  to  America,  among 
them  2,000,000  or  3,000,000  Italians.  Commis- 
sioner Wallis  goes  on  to  say  (December,  1920)  that 
Ellis  Island  is  now  handling  30,000  immigrants  a 
week.  These  are  terrific  figures,  and  confirmation 
comes  from  so  many  sides  that  there  is  no  reason 
to  doubt  them.  The  famine  which  reigns  in  central 
Europe,  the  wars  which  devastate  Poland,  the 
political  oppressions  which  reign  in  Russia,  Bo- 
hemia, the  Trentino,  the  ruin  which  has  over 
whelmed  Germany — all  this  is  arrayed  behind  the 
immigrants  in  a  drive  of  immense  power.  Living 
without  security  in  a  famished  Europe,  half  of 
which  has  lost  even  hope,  it  is  natural  and  inev- 
itable that  their  desires  should  turn,  half  in  material 
aspiration,  half  in  idealism,  to  the  great  Republic 
of  the  West,  where  there  are  wealth,  ease,  happi- 
ness— where  at  last  they  will  be  at  rest. 

From  the  American  point  of  view,  however,  the 
problem  is  not  so  easy.  It  is  true  that  America 
wants  labor,  and  America  will  continue  to  do  so 
so  long  as  she  continues  to  develop  her  soil  with 
the  ferocious  haste  which  characterizes  her.  Only 
what  America  needs  is  the  agriculturist.  She  does 
not  want  more  recruits  for  the  overcrowded  cities; 
the  trouble  is  that  the  immigrants  on  the  whole 
prefer  to  crowd  the  towns,  and  do  not  readily 
move  toward  Dakota  and  Idaho.     There  is,  of 


242  HAIL,  COLUMBIA! 

course,  a  powerful  section  of  America  which  wants 
cheap  city  labor.  All  the  sweat  shops  of  America, 
particularly  in  the  clothing  trade,  want  to  recruit 
humanity  brought  down  to  its  lowest  level  of 
physical  endurance,  of  human  pride,  something 
they  can  grind  still  finer,  something  that  can  just 
crawl  enough  to  produce  a  profit.  Those  people 
will  by  influence  and  money  do  all  they  can  to  keep 
the  gates  open,  but  it  may  be  that  they  are  getting 
more  than  is  safe  for  them,  and  that  the  masses 
they  are  recruiting  create  a  problem  which  defeats 
their  aim.  What  will  eventually  be  done  concerns 
the  Americans  and  does  not  concern  me.  All  I 
may  do  is  to  clarify  the  problem  as  I  see  it  and  to 
suggest  to  the  American  public  that  one  of  the  two 
solutions  imposes  itself — either  to  restrict  or  ex- 
clude the  immigrant;  by  degrees  to  assimilate  the 
resident  foreigner  into  the  Anglo-American  civili- 
zation; or  to  open  the  gates,  to  allow  unrestricted 
immigration  from  any  part  of  the  world,  and  from 
these  elements  to  compose  a  new  race  that  will  be  a 
synthesis  of  all  races.  Both  these  ideals  have  their 
nobility;  the  second  is  perhaps  the  more^at tractive 
because  it  is  the  more  novel.  One  cannot  help 
being  curious  of  sociological  experiments,  and  one 
would  like  to  see  the  result  of  the  fusion  of  all  the 
peoples  of  the  world  about  a  new  Tower  of  Babel. 
It  might  be  rather  hard  on  the  Tower  all  the  same! 


PARTHIAN  SHOTS  243 

As  I  come  to  the  end  of  these  impressions  I  wish 
they  could  have  been  conclusions,  but  five  months 
in  a  country  is  not  much,  however  broadly  one  may 
have  traveled  it,  whatever  labor  one  may  have 
given  to  the  understanding  of  many  kinds  of  men. 
One  is  confronted  with  such  diversity,  such  con- 
trasts, and  especially  such  novelty.  So  I  will  let 
conclusions  alone  and  say  just  this:  I  am  too  old 
to  change.  I  could  not  with  content  migrate  to 
America,  there  to  live,  to  adjust  myself  to  new 
attitudes,  new  laws  and  customs.  I  am  too  set,  too 
European  for  that;  a  certain  disabused  geniality, 
which  is  the  foundation  of  Europeanism,  would 
suffer  in  the  breeziness,  the  directness  of  America. 
But  if  I  had  to  be  born  again,  as  I  was  born,  of  a 
family  that  had  no  influence  worth  anything,  no 
money,  no  lineage — if  I  had  to  make  my  way 
again,  as  I  had  to,  against  difficulties  such  that  at 
the  age  of  twenty-five  all  I  possessed  was  a  hun- 
dred dollars  of  debts,  well  ...  in  spite  of  all 
temptations  to  belong  to  other  nations  I  should 
have  felt  that  there  was  only  one  place  for  a  young 
man  who  wanted  to  tear  from  life  full  value  for  his 
efforts;  in  spite  of  all  temptations  I  should  have 
been  born  an  American. 


THE    END 


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AUG  14  1969  9  4 


REC'D  LD 


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General  Library 

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